Apache Kafka vs. TIBCO Rendezvous

For brokering messages, Confluent Kafka is well suited since it offers a managed solution ready to use. Scenarios where the solution is not very well suited are for example, where pricing is an issue. The solution costs quite a lot for basic usage (for example: for 3 clusters, pricing is above 100k$ a year).

Incentivized

I would recommend TIBCO Rendezvous to a colleague for several reasons. One of most important could be to use it on different operating systems (i.e. Windows, Linux) and be able to create real-time communications. Another reason could be the easy message addressing: only those who subscribe to specific subject receive the messages.

Incentivized

• Apache Kafka is able to handle a large number of I/Os (writes) using 3-4 cheap servers.
• It scales very well over large workloads and can handle extreme-scale deployments (eg. Linkedin with 300 billion user events each day).
• The same Kafka setup can be used as a messaging bus, storage system or a log aggregator making it easy to maintain as one system feeding multiple applications.

Incentivized

• Faster broadcast data.
• Exchange data across multiple networks.
• It works without a central server.
• Messages filtered based on specific subject.

Incentivized

• The Kafka Tool is a community-made Java application that looks and feels from the past century.
• Logging can be confusing. This certainly shows when we have to do troubleshooting.
• Hybrid scenarios - pub/sub, but there are services in and outside a Kubernetes cluster. Then there are a ~3 options, but only 2 (the harder ones) are production-safe.

Incentivized

• RV doesn't support centralized administration to manage the delivery of synchronous messages in run time without changing its configuration which was done in code base

Incentivized

Kafka has suited our use case very well so far. Going forward we are planning to expand our platform manifold so the load on Kafka and our reliance on Kafka is going to increase only.

Not likely to renew or buy the license as they are using the TIBCO EMS as the primary mode of communication.

Incentivized

Apache Kafka is highly recommended to develop loosely coupled, real-time processing applications. Also, Apache Kafka provides property based configuration. Producer, Consumer and broker contain their own separate property file

Incentivized

Attending an official TIBCO classroom training, where you can have an active participation with an expert teacher, you can find the answers to all yours needs. In any case, if you are not satisfied on your requests, the teacher takes the time to find the best solution.

I had the opportunity to attend one and I could learn all features I needed for my business: now I can say TIBCO Rendezvous is very usable.

Incentivized

Support for Apache Kafka (if willing to pay) is available from Confluent that includes the same time that created Kafka at Linkedin so they know this software in and out. Moreover, Apache Kafka is well known and best practices documents and deployment scenarios are easily available for download. For example, from eBay, Linkedin, Uber, and NYTimes.

Incentivized

I never needed support for TIBCO Rendezvous. I always used it without any issue and until now I don't remember some situations where it interrupted its 24/7 uptime.

Incentivized

Apache Kafka is built for scale. From high throughput and real-time data streaming, it has a strong advantage over RabbitMQ with its low latency. This put Apache Kafka at the forefront as the platform of choice for large datasets messaging and ensuring scalability when data scale up tremendously. RabbitMQ however has its strengths in traditional messaging. Routing and message delivery reliability are the bedrock of RabbitMQ and this is where RabbitMQ excels. In my previous workplace, RabbitMQ was of choice as reliability matters more than scale. In two words. Apache Kafka for scale, RabbitMQ for reliability. And for cloud deployment and large dataset messaging in what I am doing now, Apache Kafka is the default choice.

TIBCO EMS provides centralized server administration to manger the delivery of services in run time

Incentivized

• Positive: bursts of traffic on special holidays are easy to handle because Kafka can absorb and buffer all the messages we need to process long enough to let an understaffed set of back-end services catch up on processing. Hard to put a number to it but we probably save $5k a month having fewer machines running.
• Positive: makes decoupling the web and API services from the deeper back-end services easier by providing topics as an interface. This allowed us to split up our teams and have them develop independently of each other, speeding up software development.
• Negative: our engineers have made mistakes such as accidentally dropping a few thousand messages due to the CLI being confusing to use, and as a result a customer lost some of their precious data. I'd say that was more our fault than Kafka's though.

Incentivized

• Positive - RV supports faster delivery of messages to multiple subscribers (asynchronous communications)
• Negative - RV doesn't support centralized administration and guarantee delivery is more accurate like EMS Persistent delivery mode

Incentivized