Apache Pulsar - A Cloud-Native Alternative to Kafka for Event-Driven Applications

Julian, a developer advocate at Stream Native, discusses Apache Pulsar as an alternative to well-known messaging and data streaming platforms like Kafka and RabbitMQ. Pulsar is a cloud-native messaging and data streaming platform designed for container environments and capable of both scalability and elasticity. It offers a unified messaging and data streaming solution, allowing developers to learn and manage only one SDK and one broker in production. Pulsar addresses common bottlenecks, such as the number of messages remaining to be consumed, by allowing users to add new consumers without the need for partitioning or rebalancing data. Unlike traditional messaging brokers, Pulsar preserves ordering guarantees while offering transparent scaling of processing power and storage capacity.
Julien discusses several key features of Apache Pulsar, an open-source messaging and streaming platform. One feature is the ability to scale the system by adding new brokers without the need for data movement between nodes. Another is the use of operators for deploying and scaling Pulsar clusters on Kubernetes. The speaker also highlights Pulsar's ability to store and retain large amounts of data, and its use of Geo replication for disaster recovery. Additionally, Pulsar supports multi-tenancy, allowing different departments or teams to share a cluster while keeping their data isolated. The platform is also compatible with various messaging protocols, ensuring a seamless migration from other systems. All of these features are available as open-source, providing users with no vendor lock-in and the ability to manage their own clusters or use a service like Stream Native. Pulsar has a large and active open-source community, with over 600 contributors and 10,000 members on the community Slack. The platform has been in production for over 10 years and is known for its robustness and maturity.
Julien discusses the features and benefits of Apache Pulsar as a messaging system, positioning it as a potential alternative to Apache Kafka. According to the speaker, Pulsar offers several advantages, such as support for multiple messaging patterns, including publish-subscribe and message queuing, and the ability to handle both batch and real-time data. Additionally, Pulsar provides native support for transactions and guarantees message delivery at least once, at most once, or exactly once. Julien also mentions that Pulsar is more scalable than Kafka, with the ability to add or remove brokers without downtime, and that it offers better cost efficiency due to its open-source nature. Julien argues that Pulsar's features make it a compelling alternative to Kafka for organizations looking for a messaging system.