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Confluent Sets Data in Motion Across Hybrid and Multicloud Environments for Real-Time Connectivity Everywhere
November 2021 by Marc Jacob
Confluent, Inc. announced that Cluster Linking is available on Confluent Platform 7.0. Combined with its earlier release on Confluent Cloud, Cluster Linking can now be used in any environment, everywhere an enterprise’s data and workloads reside. Now, organizations can securely stream data across hybrid and multicloud environments without needing to manage additional layers of complex tooling across disparate and siloed architectures. With a reliable, persistent bridge for real-time data sharing, organizations can quickly mobilize their data across their business to drive next-generation digital experiences and operations while maximizing the value of their cloud initiatives.
Hybrid and multicloud computing are now standard for most businesses. According to Ventana Research, nearly two-thirds (63%) of enterprises today have infrastructure that spans multiple public clouds or hybrid environments with the number expected to increase to three-quarters (75%) by 2023. Although these architectures are mainstream, many are struggling to keep data synced and flowing throughout their businesses in real time. Most organizations rely on manual, batch-based data transfers or brittle point-to-point connections between environments, which consumes valuable engineering time, creates technical debt, and delays strategic projects and initiatives. Out-of-date processes like these hold organizations back from realizing the full benefits of cloud with increasing operational overhead, rising costs of ownership, and growing risks and security vulnerabilities.
Cluster Linking: Seamlessly Connect Applications and Data Systems Across Hybrid and Multicloud Architectures
Cluster Linking bridges on-premises and cloud environments, moving data in real time to wherever a business needs it. That includes major cloud providers like AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure, in addition to private clouds and traditional datacenters. It seamlessly links Confluent clusters, regardless of their environment or geographical location, enabling organizations to securely replicate data and migrate to the cloud with low downtime. There’s now a single connection pattern for data to travel across a business in real time, which significantly alleviates architectural complexity and reduces technical debt. Global teams also benefit from self-service access to data in real time with data perfectly mirrored in different regions across the organization.
Introducing Confluent Platform 7.0
To enable any business to set data in motion, Confluent Platform 7.0 also features new cloud-native management capabilities and improved cloud-based monitoring for on-premises clusters.
New cloud-native management capabilities for Confluent for Kubernetes
With the launch of Confluent for Kubernetes, Confluent made it easier than ever to build and manage a private cloud Apache Kafka® service, whether on VMware Tanzu, Red Hat OpenShift, or other private cloud solutions. In this latest release, organizations can now provision and manage connectors, schemas, and cluster links through the complete, declarative API rather than through manual processes. These new cloud-native management capabilities help organizations reduce operational burdens for their engineering teams and achieve faster time to value with the platform. In addition, Confluent for Kubernetes elastically scales clusters up or down to meet demand through its new Shrink API. This offers greater flexibility as business demands change, enabling teams to cost-effectively handle any data in motion workload without needing to overprovision infrastructure.
New Reduced Infrastructure Mode for Confluent Control Center leverages Confluent Health+ to lower cluster monitoring costs
“Being a critical component of our new CRM and Customer 360 solutions, it was essential that we be able to quickly and easily monitor our Confluent clusters to ensure that they are performing efficiently and that there are no failed components,” said Larry Wilson, Data Architect, Farm Bureau Insurance of Michigan. “Within minutes of configuring Confluent Health+ for our cluster we received an alert notification of a problem with one of our brokers. The notification email not only identified the issue, but included possible corrective action steps to take. With this information, we were able to quickly resolve the problem before it began to cause performance issues. With the recent addition of the monitoring of connectors to Health+, we are now also automatically notified of failed connectors and are able to rectify these problems before they are felt by downstream systems.”
Confluent Control Center centrally manages and monitors key components across Confluent Platform to increase visibility and reduce costly business disruption and downtime. Historically, the GUI tool required data for monitoring clusters to be stored locally. As clusters scaled however, those storage requirements became increasingly expensive and burdensome.
To solve that hurdle, organizations can now leverage Reduced Infrastructure Mode for Control Center to strictly use its management capabilities while offloading monitoring to Confluent Health+. With Health+, organizations can leverage intelligent alerting and cloud-based monitoring capabilities to greatly reduce the risk of cluster downtime and eliminate the need to store monitoring data on-premises. This removes expensive and intensive storage requirements, reducing organizations’ infrastructure monitoring costs by up to 70%.
