Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Google Cloud Dataproc VS Google Cloud Dataflow

Compare Google Cloud Dataproc VS Google Cloud Dataflow and see what are their differences

Google Cloud Dataproc logo Google Cloud Dataproc

Managed Apache Spark and Apache Hadoop service which is fast, easy to use, and low cost

Google Cloud Dataflow logo Google Cloud Dataflow

Google Cloud Dataflow is a fully-managed cloud service and programming model for batch and streaming big data processing.
  • Google Cloud Dataproc Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-09
  • Google Cloud Dataflow Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-03

Google Cloud Dataproc features and specs

  • Managed Service
    Google Cloud Dataproc is a fully managed service, which reduces the complexity of deploying, managing, and scaling big data clusters like Hadoop and Spark.
  • Integration with Google Cloud
    Seamlessly integrates with other Google Cloud services like Google Cloud Storage, BigQuery, and Google Cloud Pub/Sub, allowing for easy data handling and processing.
  • Scalability
    Can quickly scale resources up or down to meet the computing demands, making it flexible for different workload sizes and types.
  • Cost Efficiency
    Offers a pay-as-you-go pricing model, and can utilize preemptible VMs for reduced costs, making it a cost-effective option for running big data workloads.
  • Customizability
    Supports custom image management and initialization actions, allowing users to tailor clusters to meet specific needs.

Possible disadvantages of Google Cloud Dataproc

  • Complex Pricing
    Understanding and predicting costs can be challenging due to various pricing factors like cluster size, usage duration, and types of instances used.
  • Learning Curve
    Dataproc requires familiarity with Google Cloud and big data tools, which may present a steep learning curve for beginners.
  • Limited Customization Compared to Self-Managed
    While customizable, it may not offer as much flexibility and control as self-managed on-premises solutions, which can be limiting for highly specialized configurations.
  • Dependency on Google Cloud Ecosystem
    As a Google Cloud service, users are somewhat locked into the Google ecosystem, which may not be ideal for those using a multi-cloud strategy.
  • Potential Latency for Large Data Transfers
    Transferring large datasets between Dataproc and other services, especially across regions, might introduce latency issues.

Google Cloud Dataflow features and specs

  • Scalability
    Google Cloud Dataflow can automatically scale up or down depending on your data processing needs, handling massive datasets with ease.
  • Fully Managed
    Dataflow is a fully managed service, which means you don't have to worry about managing the underlying infrastructure.
  • Unified Programming Model
    It provides a single programming model for both batch and streaming data processing using Apache Beam, simplifying the development process.
  • Integration
    Seamlessly integrates with other Google Cloud services like BigQuery, Cloud Storage, and Bigtable.
  • Real-time Analytics
    Supports real-time data processing, enabling quicker insights and facilitating faster decision-making.
  • Cost Efficiency
    Pay-as-you-go pricing model ensures you only pay for resources you actually use, which can be cost-effective.
  • Global Availability
    Cloud Dataflow is available globally, which allows for regionalized data processing.
  • Fault Tolerance
    Built-in fault tolerance mechanisms help ensure uninterrupted data processing.

Possible disadvantages of Google Cloud Dataflow

  • Steep Learning Curve
    The complexity of using Apache Beam and understanding its model can be challenging for beginners.
  • Debugging Difficulties
    Debugging data processing pipelines can be complex and time-consuming, especially for large-scale data flows.
  • Cost Management
    While it can be cost-efficient, the costs can rise quickly if not monitored properly, particularly with real-time data processing.
  • Vendor Lock-in
    Using Google Cloud Dataflow can lead to vendor lock-in, making it challenging to migrate to another cloud provider.
  • Limited Support for Non-Google Services
    While it integrates well within Google Cloud, support for non-Google services may not be as robust.
  • Latency
    There can be some latency in data processing, especially when dealing with high volumes of data.
  • Complexity in Pipeline Design
    Designing pipelines to be efficient and cost-effective can be complex, requiring significant expertise.

Google Cloud Dataproc videos

Dataproc

Google Cloud Dataflow videos

Introduction to Google Cloud Dataflow - Course Introduction

More videos:

  • Review - Serverless data processing with Google Cloud Dataflow (Google Cloud Next '17)
  • Review - Apache Beam and Google Cloud Dataflow

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Google Cloud Dataproc and Google Cloud Dataflow)
Data Dashboard
37 37%
63% 63
Big Data
24 24%
76% 76
Data Warehousing
24 24%
76% 76
Development
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Google Cloud Dataproc and Google Cloud Dataflow

Google Cloud Dataproc Reviews

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Google Cloud Dataflow Reviews

Top 8 Apache Airflow Alternatives in 2024
Google Cloud Dataflow is highly focused on real-time streaming data and batch data processing from web resources, IoT devices, etc. Data gets cleansed and filtered as Dataflow implements Apache Beam to simplify large-scale data processing. Such prepared data is ready for analysis for Google BigQuery or other analytics tools for prediction, personalization, and other purposes.
Source: blog.skyvia.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Google Cloud Dataflow should be more popular than Google Cloud Dataproc. It has been mentiond 14 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.

Google Cloud Dataproc mentions (3)

  • Connecting IPython notebook to spark master running in different machines
    I have also a spark cluster created with google cloud dataproc. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Why we don’t use Spark
    Specifically, we heavily rely on managed services from our cloud provider, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), for hosting our data in managed databases like BigTable and Spanner. For data transformations, we initially heavily relied on DataProc - a managed service from Google to manage a Spark cluster. - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years ago
  • Data processing issue
    With that, the best way to maximize processing and minimize time is to use Dataflow or Dataproc depending on your needs. These systems are highly parallel and clustered, which allows for much larger processing pipelines that execute quickly. Source: over 3 years ago

Google Cloud Dataflow mentions (14)

  • How do you implement CDC in your organization
    Imo if you are using the cloud and not doing anything particularly fancy the native tooling is good enough. For AWS that is DMS (for RDBMS) and Kinesis/Lamba (for streams). Google has Data Fusion and Dataflow . Azure hasData Factory if you are unfortunate enough to have to use SQL Server or Azure. Imo the vendored tools and open source tools are more useful when you need to ingest data from SaaS platforms, and... Source: over 2 years ago
  • Here’s a playlist of 7 hours of music I use to focus when I’m coding/developing. Post yours as well if you also have one!
    This sub is for Apache Beam and Google Cloud Dataflow as the sidebar suggests. Source: over 2 years ago
  • How are view/listen counts rolled up on something like Spotify/YouTube?
    I am pretty sure they are using pub/sub with probably a Dataflow pipeline to process all that data. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Best way to export several GCP datasets to AWS?
    You can run a Dataflow job that copies the data directly from BQ into S3, though you'll have to run a job per table. This can be somewhat expensive to do. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Why we don’t use Spark
    It was clear we needed something that was built specifically for our big-data SaaS requirements. Dataflow was our first idea, as the service is fully managed, highly scalable, fairly reliable and has a unified model for streaming & batch workloads. Sadly, the cost of this service was quite large. Secondly, at that moment in time, the service only accepted Java implementations, of which we had little knowledge... - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Google Cloud Dataproc and Google Cloud Dataflow, you can also consider the following products

Amazon EMR - Amazon Elastic MapReduce is a web service that makes it easy to quickly process vast amounts of data.

Google BigQuery - A fully managed data warehouse for large-scale data analytics.

HortonWorks Data Platform - The Hortonworks Data Platform is a 100% open source distribution of Apache Hadoop that is truly...

Databricks - Databricks provides a Unified Analytics Platform that accelerates innovation by unifying data science, engineering and business.‎What is Apache Spark?

Qubole - Qubole delivers a self-service platform for big aata analytics built on Amazon, Microsoft and Google Clouds.

Snowflake - Snowflake is the only data platform built for the cloud for all your data & all your users. Learn more about our purpose-built SQL cloud data warehouse.