Amazon MSK is a fully managed service that makes it easy to build and run applications that use Apache Kafka for real-time streaming data. Kafka is an open-source distributed event streaming platform that enables you to publish, subscribe, store, and process streams of records in real time.
With MSK, AWS handles the operational complexity of setting up and managing a Kafka cluster, allowing you to focus on using Kafka for event streaming and analytics.
Key Features of Amazon MSK
Fully Managed Apache Kafka Service:
MSK simplifies the management of Kafka, automatically handling tasks like patching, scaling, and monitoring.
You can focus on building streaming applications while AWS manages the Kafka infrastructure.
Seamless Integration with AWS:
Integrates easily with AWS services like Lambda, Redshift, S3, EMR, CloudWatch, and Kinesis.
Supports AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) for access control and VPC for secure networking.
High Availability and Durability:
MSK replicates your Kafka data across multiple Availability Zones (AZs), ensuring fault tolerance and high availability.
Built-in data replication within the Kafka cluster for durability.
Scalability:
Easily scale your Kafka clusters by adding brokers to handle more data and throughput, without affecting your application.
MSK automatically adjusts cluster resources to scale with your workload demands.
Apache Kafka Compatibility:
MSK supports the full Apache Kafka API, making it compatible with any Kafka producer or consumer, so you can use existing Kafka tools and applications without modification.
Supports common Kafka features, including topics, partitions, consumer groups, message ordering, and offset management.
Security:
MSK supports encryption at rest and in transit using TLS and AWS Key Management Service (KMS).
You can control access to your Kafka clusters using IAM, Access Control Lists (ACLs), and VPC security groups.
Monitoring:
Integrated with Amazon CloudWatch to provide real-time metrics for cluster performance (e.g., throughput, broker health, and lag).
AWS CloudTrail provides audit logging for API calls, improving security and compliance.
Managed Storage:
MSK uses EBS volumes for broker storage, ensuring durability and high throughput.
Data can be retained for a custom period (up to several weeks or more), depending on your requirements.