Redpanda is an event streaming platform that is free and open source, similar to MariaDB and CockroachDB. It is compatible with Kafka APIs and is used by many as an alternative to Apache Kafka due to its performance and lightweight design.
Kubernetes (K8s) is the defacto platform for cloud-native environments, so it’s not surprising that many developers choose it to manage their Redpanda clusters. But when things go wrong, it’s not as simple as “kill it, dump it, and rebuild” — much like with other data-intensive software, databases, messaging systems, and even Apache Kafka®. This is especially true when you’re streaming vast amounts of data with high throughput.