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When NOT To Use Apache Kafka

Apache Kafka is the de facto standard for event streaming to process data in motion. With its significant adoption growth across all industries, I get a very valid question every week: When do I NOT use Apache Kafka? What limitations does the event streaming platform have? When does Kafka simply not provide the needed capabilities? How do I qualify Kafka out as not the right tool for the job? 

This blog post explores the DOs and DONTs. Separate sections explain when to use Kafka, when NOT to use Kafka, and when to MAYBE use Kafka.

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How I Stopped Coding Repetitive Service Components with Kong

For the last 10 years, I have been building RESTful services as the feature team member on projects assigned to me via consulting opportunities or as a full-time corporate employee. This represents one-third of my career and is what I have enjoyed the most.

However, in all of those years, when the system is part of an application modernization initiative, I feel like I'm learning the same lessons over and over:

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The Best Ways to Update IoT Devices Over-the-Air

As the Internet of Things (IoT) continues its march across the world, manufacturers have embraced new ways to remotely and reliably update devices in the field. Considering there are forecast to be more than 41 billion connected IoT devices by 2025, keeping them updated with the latest software and firmware is essential.

That’s where over-the-air (OTA) updates come in. OTA update refers to the practices of remotely updating the software or firmware of a connected IoT device. This saves IT staff time and effort as they can push updates to a fleet of devices at once. 

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Server Name Indication (SNI) and Ingress TLS in Kubernetes with Ambassador

The open-source Ambassador 0.50 API gateway adds support for Server Name Indication (SNI), a much-requested feature from the community that allows the configuration of multiple TLS certificates to be served from a single ingress IP address. In this tutorial, we explore how multiple secure domains (e.g., https://www.datawire.io and https://www.getambassador.io.) can be provided by a single or load balanced Ambassador running within a Kubernetes cluster.

SNI Use Cases

In a nutshell (and with thanks to Wikipedia), SNI is an extension to the TLS protocol, which allows a client to indicate which hostname it is attempting to connect to at the start of the TCP handshaking process. This allows the server to present multiple certificates on the same IP address and TCP port number, which in turn enables the serving of multiple secure websites or API services without requiring all those sites to use the same certificate.