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Apache Kafka VS AWS Database Migration Service

Compare Apache Kafka VS AWS Database Migration Service and see what are their differences

Apache Kafka logo Apache Kafka

Apache Kafka is an open-source message broker project developed by the Apache Software Foundation written in Scala.

AWS Database Migration Service logo AWS Database Migration Service

AWS Database Migration Service allows you to migrate to AWS quickly and securely. Learn more about the benefits and the key use cases.
  • Apache Kafka Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-10-01
  • AWS Database Migration Service Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-01-30

Apache Kafka features and specs

  • High Throughput
    Kafka is capable of handling thousands of messages per second due to its distributed architecture, making it suitable for applications that require high throughput.
  • Scalability
    Kafka can easily scale horizontally by adding more brokers to a cluster, making it highly scalable to serve increased loads.
  • Fault Tolerance
    Kafka has built-in replication, ensuring that data is replicated across multiple brokers, providing fault tolerance and high availability.
  • Durability
    Kafka ensures data durability by writing data to disk, which can be replicated to other nodes, ensuring data is not lost even if a broker fails.
  • Real-time Processing
    Kafka supports real-time data streaming, enabling applications to process and react to data as it arrives.
  • Decoupling of Systems
    Kafka acts as a buffer and decouples the production and consumption of messages, allowing independent scaling and management of producers and consumers.
  • Wide Ecosystem
    The Kafka ecosystem includes various tools and connectors such as Kafka Streams, Kafka Connect, and KSQL, which enrich the functionality of Kafka.
  • Strong Community Support
    Kafka has strong community support and extensive documentation, making it easier for developers to find help and resources.

Possible disadvantages of Apache Kafka

  • Complex Setup and Management
    Kafka's distributed nature can make initial setup and ongoing management complex, requiring expert knowledge and significant administrative effort.
  • Operational Overhead
    Running Kafka clusters involves additional operational overhead, including hardware provisioning, monitoring, tuning, and scaling.
  • Latency Sensitivity
    Despite its high throughput, Kafka may experience increased latency in certain scenarios, especially when configured for high durability and consistency.
  • Learning Curve
    The concepts and architecture of Kafka can be difficult for new users to grasp, leading to a steep learning curve.
  • Hardware Intensive
    Kafka's performance characteristics often require dedicated and powerful hardware, which can be costly to procure and maintain.
  • Dependency Management
    Managing Kafka's dependencies and ensuring compatibility between versions of Kafka, Zookeeper, and other ecosystem tools can be challenging.
  • Limited Support for Small Messages
    Kafka is optimized for large throughput and can be inefficient for applications that require handling a lot of small messages, where overhead can become significant.
  • Operational Complexity for Small Teams
    Smaller teams might find the operational complexity and maintenance burden of Kafka difficult to manage without a dedicated operations or DevOps team.

AWS Database Migration Service features and specs

  • Minimal Downtime
    AWS Database Migration Service ensures minimal downtime during the database migration process, making it ideal for applications that require continuous availability.
  • Supports Multiple Database Engines
    It supports migration of data between a wide variety of database engines including Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, and more.
  • Cost-Effective
    With a pay-as-you-go pricing model, users only pay for the compute resources used during the migration process, making it a cost-effective solution.
  • Managed Service
    As a fully managed service, it reduces the administrative overhead associated with database migrations, including hardware provisioning, software patching, and monitoring.
  • Continuous Data Replication
    It supports continuous data replication with high availability, allowing for nearly real-time data synchronization between the source and target databases.

Possible disadvantages of AWS Database Migration Service

  • Complex Initial Setup
    The initial setup and configuration can be complex, especially for users who are not familiar with AWS services and database migration processes.
  • Limited Customization
    Being a managed service, it offers limited customization options compared to self-managed solutions, which might be a drawback for users with specific requirements.
  • Latency Issues
    For large datasets, there might be latency issues during migration, depending on the network conditions and the geographical locations of the source and target databases.
  • Dependency on AWS Ecosystem
    The service is tightly integrated with AWS, which means it may not be as effective or easy to use with non-AWS environments, creating potential vendor lock-in.
  • Performance Overheads
    There may be performance overheads associated with running the migration tasks, which could impact the performance of the source or target databases during the migration process.

Apache Kafka videos

Apache Kafka Tutorial | What is Apache Kafka? | Kafka Tutorial for Beginners | Edureka

More videos:

  • Review - Apache Kafka - Getting Started - Kafka Multi-node Cluster - Review Properties
  • Review - 4. Apache Kafka Fundamentals | Confluent Fundamentals for Apache Kafka®
  • Review - Apache Kafka in 6 minutes
  • Review - Apache Kafka Explained (Comprehensive Overview)
  • Review - 2. Motivations and Customer Use Cases | Apache Kafka Fundamentals

AWS Database Migration Service videos

AWS Database Migration Service (DMS)

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Apache Kafka and AWS Database Migration Service)
Stream Processing
100 100%
0% 0
Data Integration
71 71%
29% 29
ETL
0 0%
100% 100
Web Service Automation
70 70%
30% 30

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Apache Kafka and AWS Database Migration Service

Apache Kafka Reviews

Best ETL Tools: A Curated List
Debezium is an open-source Change Data Capture (CDC) tool that originated from RedHat. It leverages Apache Kafka and Kafka Connect to enable real-time data replication from databases. Debezium was partly inspired by Martin Kleppmann’s "Turning the Database Inside Out" concept, which emphasized the power of the CDC for modern data pipelines.
Source: estuary.dev
Best message queue for cloud-native apps
If you take the time to sort out the history of message queues, you will find a very interesting phenomenon. Most of the currently popular message queues were born around 2010. For example, Apache Kafka was born at LinkedIn in 2010, Derek Collison developed Nats in 2010, and Apache Pulsar was born at Yahoo in 2012. What is the reason for this?
Source: docs.vanus.ai
Are Free, Open-Source Message Queues Right For You?
Apache Kafka is a highly scalable and robust messaging queue system designed by LinkedIn and donated to the Apache Software Foundation. It's ideal for real-time data streaming and processing, providing high throughput for publishing and subscribing to records or messages. Kafka is typically used in scenarios that require real-time analytics and monitoring, IoT applications,...
Source: blog.iron.io
10 Best Open Source ETL Tools for Data Integration
It is difficult to anticipate the exact demand for open-source tools in 2023 because it depends on various factors and emerging trends. However, open-source solutions such as Kubernetes for container orchestration, TensorFlow for machine learning, Apache Kafka for real-time data streaming, and Prometheus for monitoring and observability are expected to grow in prominence in...
Source: testsigma.com
11 Best FREE Open-Source ETL Tools in 2024
Apache Kafka is an Open-Source Data Streaming Tool written in Scala and Java. It publishes and subscribes to a stream of records in a fault-tolerant manner and provides a unified, high-throughput, and low-latency platform to manage data.
Source: hevodata.com

AWS Database Migration Service Reviews

Best ETL Tools: A Curated List
Mostly Batch: Matillion ETL had some real-time CDC based on Amazon DMS that has been deprecated. The Data Loader does have some CDC, but overall, the Data Loader is limited in functionality, and if it’s based on DMS, it will have the limitations of DMS as well.
Source: estuary.dev

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Apache Kafka should be more popular than AWS Database Migration Service. It has been mentiond 143 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Apache Kafka mentions (143)

View more

AWS Database Migration Service mentions (31)

  • Choosing the right, real-time, Postgres CDC platform
    The major infrastructure providers offer CDC products that work within their ecosystem. Tools like AWS DMS, GCP Datastream, and Azure Data Factory can be configured to stream changes from Postgres to other infrastructure. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • 3 Proven Patterns for Reporting with Serverless
    The second big drawback is speed. There will be more latency in this scenario. How much latency depends upon the environment. If there is RDBMS in the source, AWS Data Migration Service will at worst take around 60 seconds to replicate. That cost needs to be accounted for. Secondarily, many triggering events are leveraged which happen fairly quickly but they do add up. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • RDS Database Migration Series - A horror story of using AWS DMS with a happy ending
    Amazon Database Migration Service might initially seem like a perfect tool for a smooth and straightforward migration to RDS. However, our overall experience using it turned out to be closer to an open beta product rather than a production-ready tool for dealing with a critical asset of any company, which is its data. Nevertheless, with the extra adjustments, we made it work for almost all our needs. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Aurora serverless v1 to v2 upgrade pointers?
    Does AWS DMS make sense here? Doesn't the aforementioned "snapshot+restore to provisioned and upgrade" method suffice? I wanted to get some opinions before deep diving into the docs for yet another AWS service. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Using Amazon RDS Postgres as a read replica from an external Database
    One easy solution is AWS DMS. I use it for on-going CDC replication with custom transforms, but you can use it for simple replication too. Source: about 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Apache Kafka and AWS Database Migration Service, you can also consider the following products

RabbitMQ - RabbitMQ is an open source message broker software.

AWS Glue - Fully managed extract, transform, and load (ETL) service

StatCounter - StatCounter is a simple but powerful real-time web analytics service that helps you track, analyse and understand your visitors so you can make good decisions to become more successful online.

Xplenty - Xplenty is the #1 SecurETL - allowing you to build low-code data pipelines on the most secure and flexible data transformation platform. No longer worry about manual data transformations. Start your free 14-day trial now.

Apache ActiveMQ - Apache ActiveMQ is an open source messaging and integration patterns server.

Skyvia - Free cloud data platform for data integration, backup & management