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Comment by benjaminwootton

7 months ago

That’s my experience too. I’ve deployed it more than ten times as a consultant and never really understood the reputation for complexity. It “just works.”

I've deployed it a bunch of times and, crucially, maintained it thereafter. It's very complex, especially when troubleshooting pathological behavior or recovering from failures, and I don't see why anyone with significant experience with Kafka could reasonably claim otherwise.

Kafka is perhaps the most aptly named software I've ever used.

That said, it's rock solid and I continue to recommend it for cases where it makes sense.

  • I know a team that had their Kafka cluster fall over, and they couldn't get it to stay up until eventually their LOB got shut down for being unreliable. I don't know if they were especially bad at their jobs, or their volumes were unreasonable, or what, but it seemed like a bad time for all.