Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

AWS Greengrass VS Apache Airflow

Compare AWS Greengrass VS Apache Airflow and see what are their differences

Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

AWS Greengrass logo AWS Greengrass

Local compute, messaging, data caching, and synch capabilities for connected devices

Apache Airflow logo Apache Airflow

Airflow is a platform to programmaticaly author, schedule and monitor data pipelines.
  • AWS Greengrass Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-03-28
  • Apache Airflow Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-06-17

AWS Greengrass features and specs

  • Edge Computing
    AWS Greengrass allows devices to process data locally without relying on cloud resources, reducing latency and ensuring continued operation even with intermittent connectivity.
  • Seamless AWS Integration
    Seamlessly integrates with a variety of AWS services such as AWS Lambda, AWS IoT Core, and Amazon S3, allowing for enhanced functionality and simplified data exchange between edge devices and the cloud.
  • Security Features
    Offers robust security features, including data encryption for both in-transit and at-rest data, ensuring secure communication and data storage.
  • OTA Updates
    Provides over-the-air software updates, allowing developers to deploy new updates and patches to edge devices securely and efficiently.
  • Machine Learning at the Edge
    Supports ML inference capabilities, enabling machine learning models to run locally on devices, which is essential for real-time data processing and decision-making.

Possible disadvantages of AWS Greengrass

  • Complexity
    The integration of Greengrass in IoT solutions can add complexity, requiring a good understanding of both AWS services and edge computing.
  • Cost Considerations
    While processing data locally can reduce cloud costs, there may be additional expenses related to maintaining the hardware and ensuring compatibility with Greengrass, as well as costs associated with AWS usage.
  • Device Compatibility
    Not all devices may be compatible with AWS Greengrass, which may limit its use cases or require specific hardware configurations.
  • Dependency on AWS Ecosystem
    Being heavily integrated with the AWS ecosystem means that changes or outages in AWS services can potentially impact Greengrass deployments.
  • Learning Curve
    There may be a steep learning curve for developers who are new to AWS Greengrass, especially when it comes to deploying and managing complex IoT applications.

Apache Airflow features and specs

  • Scalability
    Apache Airflow can scale horizontally, allowing it to handle large volumes of tasks and workflows by distributing the workload across multiple worker nodes.
  • Extensibility
    It supports custom plugins and operators, making it highly customizable to fit various use cases. Users can define their own tasks, sensors, and hooks.
  • Visualization
    Airflow provides an intuitive web interface for monitoring and managing workflows. The interface allows users to visualize DAGs, track task statuses, and debug failures.
  • Flexibility
    Workflows are defined using Python code, which offers a high degree of flexibility and programmatic control over the tasks and their dependencies.
  • Integrations
    Airflow has built-in integrations with a wide range of tools and services such as AWS, Google Cloud, and Apache Hadoop, making it easier to connect to external systems.

Possible disadvantages of Apache Airflow

  • Complexity
    Setting up and configuring Apache Airflow can be complex, particularly for new users. It requires careful management of infrastructure components like databases and web servers.
  • Resource Intensive
    Airflow can be resource-heavy in terms of both memory and CPU usage, especially when dealing with a large number of tasks and DAGs.
  • Learning Curve
    The learning curve can be steep for users who are not familiar with Python or the underlying concepts of workflow management.
  • Limited Real-Time Processing
    Airflow is better suited for batch processing and scheduled tasks rather than real-time event-based processing.
  • Dependency Management
    Managing task dependencies in complex DAGs can become cumbersome and may lead to configuration errors if not properly handled.

Analysis of Apache Airflow

Overall verdict

  • Yes, Apache Airflow is a good choice for managing complex workflows and data pipelines, particularly for organizations that require a scalable and reliable orchestration tool.

Why this product is good

  • Apache Airflow is considered good because it provides a robust and flexible platform for authoring, scheduling, and monitoring workflows. It is open-source and has a large community that contributes to its continuous improvement. Airflow's modular architecture allows for easy integration with various data sources and destinations, and its UI is user-friendly, enabling effective pipeline visualization and management. Additionally, it offers extensibility through a wide array of plugins and customization options.

Recommended for

    Apache Airflow is recommended for data engineers, data scientists, and IT professionals who need to automate and manage workflows. It is particularly suited for organizations handling large-scale data processing tasks, requiring integration with various systems, and those looking to deploy machine learning pipelines or ETL processes.

AWS Greengrass videos

Run ML Models at the Edge with AWS Greengrass ML

Apache Airflow videos

Airflow Tutorial for Beginners - Full Course in 2 Hours 2022

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to AWS Greengrass and Apache Airflow)
Data Dashboard
100 100%
0% 0
Workflow Automation
0 0%
100% 100
IoT Platform
100 100%
0% 0
Automation
0 0%
100% 100

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare AWS Greengrass and Apache Airflow

AWS Greengrass Reviews

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Apache Airflow Reviews

5 Airflow Alternatives for Data Orchestration
While Apache Airflow continues to be a popular tool for data orchestration, the alternatives presented here offer a range of features and benefits that may better suit certain projects or team preferences. Whether you prioritize simplicity, code-centric design, or the integration of machine learning workflows, there is likely an alternative that meets your needs. By...
Top 8 Apache Airflow Alternatives in 2024
Apache Airflow is a workflow streamlining solution aiming at accelerating routine procedures. This article provides a detailed description of Apache Airflow as one of the most popular automation solutions. It also presents and compares alternatives to Airflow, their characteristic features, and recommended application areas. Based on that, each business could decide which...
Source: blog.skyvia.com
10 Best Airflow Alternatives for 2024
In a nutshell, you gained a basic understanding of Apache Airflow and its powerful features. On the other hand, you understood some of the limitations and disadvantages of Apache Airflow. Hence, this article helped you explore the best Apache Airflow Alternatives available in the market. So, you can try hands-on on these Airflow Alternatives and select the best according to...
Source: hevodata.com
A List of The 16 Best ETL Tools And Why To Choose Them
Apache Airflow is an open-source platform to programmatically author, schedule, and monitor workflows. The platform features a web-based user interface and a command-line interface for managing and triggering workflows.
15 Best ETL Tools in 2022 (A Complete Updated List)
Apache Airflow programmatically creates, schedules and monitors workflows. It can also modify the scheduler to run the jobs as and when required.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Apache Airflow seems to be a lot more popular than AWS Greengrass. While we know about 75 links to Apache Airflow, we've tracked only 5 mentions of AWS Greengrass. 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.

AWS Greengrass mentions (5)

  • Orchestrating Application Workloads in Distributed Embedded Systems: Setting up a Nomad Cluster with AWS IoT Greengrass - Part 1
    In this blog post series, we will demonstrate how to use AWS IoT Greengrass and Hashicorp Nomad to seamlessly interface with multiple interconnected devices and orchestrate service deployments on them. Greengrass will allow us to view the cluster as a single "Thing" from the cloud perspective, while Nomad will serve as the primary cluster orchestration tool. - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
  • AWS Summit 2022 Australia and New Zealand - Day 2, AI/ML Edition
    AWS IoT Greengrass allows one to manage their IOT Edge devices, download ML models locally, so that inference can then be also be done locally. - Source: dev.to / about 3 years ago
  • Applying DevOps Principles to Robotics
    To assist in deployment and management of workloads in your fleet, it's worth taking advantage of a fleet or device management tool such as AWS GreenGrass, Formant or Rocos. - Source: dev.to / over 3 years ago
  • Machine Learning Best Practices for Public Sector Organizations
    In some cases, such as with edge devices, inferencing needs to occur even when there is limited or no connectivity to the cloud. Mining fields are an example of this type of use case. AWS IoT Greengrass enables ML inference locally using models that are created, trained, and optimized in the cloud using Amazon SageMaker, AWS Deep Learning AMI, or AWS Deep Learning Containers, and deployed on the edge devices. - Source: dev.to / over 3 years ago
  • Looking for a good IoT overview + a simple tutorial
    Take a look at Greengrass https://aws.amazon.com/greengrass/ Enables OTA updates and fleet management. Source: about 4 years ago

Apache Airflow mentions (75)

  • The DOJ Still Wants Google to Sell Off Chrome
    Is this really true? Something that can be supported by clear evidence? I’ve seen this trotted out many times, but it seems like there are interesting Apache projects: https://airflow.apache.org/ https://iceberg.apache.org/ https://kafka.apache.org/ https://superset.apache.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago
  • 10 Must-Know Open Source Platform Engineering Tools for AI/ML Workflows
    Apache Airflow offers simplicity when it comes to scheduling, authoring, and monitoring ML workflows using Python. The tool's greatest advantage is its compatibility with any system or process you are running. This also eliminates manual intervention and increases team productivity, which aligns with the principles of Platform Engineering tools. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • Data Orchestration Tool Analysis: Airflow, Dagster, Flyte
    Data orchestration tools are key for managing data pipelines in modern workflows. When it comes to tools, Apache Airflow, Dagster, and Flyte are popular tools serving this need, but they serve different purposes and follow different philosophies. Choosing the right tool for your requirements is essential for scalability and efficiency. In this blog, I will compare Apache Airflow, Dagster, and Flyte, exploring... - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • AIOps, DevOps, MLOps, LLMOps – What’s the Difference?
    Data pipelines: Apache Kafka and Airflow are often used for building data pipelines that can continuously feed data to models in production. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • Data Engineering with DLT and REST
    This article demonstrates how to work with near real-time and historical data using the dlt package. Whether you need to scale data access across the enterprise or provide historical data for post-event analysis, you can use the same framework to provide customer data. In a future article, I'll demonstrate how to use dlt with a workflow orchestrator such as Apache Airflow or Dagster.``. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing AWS Greengrass and Apache Airflow, you can also consider the following products

Particle.io - Particle is an IoT platform enabling businesses to build, connect and manage their connected solutions.

Make.com - Tool for workflow automation (Former Integromat)

AWS IoT - Easily and securely connect devices to the cloud.

ifttt - IFTTT puts the internet to work for you. Create simple connections between the products you use every day.

Azure IoT Hub - Manage billions of IoT devices with Azure IoT Hub, a cloud platform that lets you easily connect, monitor, provision, and configure IoT devices.

Microsoft Power Automate - Microsoft Power Automate is an automation platform that integrates DPA, RPA, and process mining. It lets you automate your organization at scale using low-code and AI.