The Step-By-Step Guide to Move Apache Kafka to Amazon MSK

Amazon MSK- this service has changed the entire ballgame for those of us working with Apache Kafka. For starters, it has taken out the administrative nightmare in self-managing the Apache Kafka workloads in production and has helped save the costs that businesses would otherwise be spending on resources, time, and effort. The cherry on the cake is the boost in scalability, efficiency, compatibility, and elasticity it offers. 

If you’re a business that already knows the simplicity and ease that Amazon MSK can bring to your Apache Kafka workloads but don’t know how to move to MSK, we’ve got you covered. That’s exactly what we’ll talk about in this blog—how to move to Amazon MSK in three simple steps. 

First things first

Before we delve into how to get started with the move, let’s first see what Amazon MSK does and how it will help your business.

The beauty of this solution lies in the fact that this works as a distributed, fully-managed service. This means you would no longer have to worry about provisioning, configuration, and maintenance of Apache Kafka clusters. Amazon MSK will manage Apache Kafka clusters, handle your Zookeeper nodes, and supervise the entire Apache Kafka infrastructure.

Result—no overhead costs, no complexities, and more focus on creating streaming applications.

Getting started

Since you now know what Amazon MSK is, let’s get to the point—how to get started with moving to Amazon MSK? What are the best practices one should follow? And, how much time will it take? 

We, at Cambridge Technology, have a Kafka Migration Program crafted to help make the process smooth and seamless. Being an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner, we have been a preferred vendor for multiple clients to completely migrate from self-managed Apache Kafka to Amazon MSK in just three steps

How? Let’s get into that

Ideation first

To do anything right, you need a plan and a clear structure for the process. That’s what we begin with too.

Once you register for the program, we’ll begin the first step of the ideation process—conducting a half-day collaborative workshop that will cover all you need to know about Amazon MSK. The phase includes going through features, use cases, and solutions for specific issues. We will sit down with you to understand what exactly your business’ pain points are with one goal—to create an architectural roadmap document to establish a streaming platform using Amazon MSK.

During the one and a half to two-week ideation phase, we’ll answer every question you have on Amazon MSK and create a plan that works specifically for your business.

Migration made simple

Once we've got a roadmap ready, we’ll help you move your Apache Kafka workloads to Amazon MSK over the next two to four weeks using migration scripts. Your business will get uninterrupted support from our certified consulting teams that have seamlessly helped several customers move to Amazon MSK over two weeks. 

With our expertise in data integration, hands-on technical assets, and migration incentives, we’ll make sure the process is customized and addresses every pain point that your business faces with managing Apache Kafka on your own. This will ensure that your migration process is simplified, seamless, and sticks to the blueprint.

In fact, we did a webinar with AWS, showing just how easy the migration to Amazon MSK gets. 

Modernize for the future

We believe that the real trick to make the most of Amazon MSK is what you do once you migrate to MSK. And that’s where our expertise will make a world of difference. Why? Because we will help you get rid of the monolithic applications that are harder to manage. How?

Well, we’ll begin with breaking them down to smaller, loosely coupled, more manageable microservices. This means you can make changes to any of the smaller services without being worried about impacting the overall architecture. Simpler, right? 

Throughout this phase, which could take between 3-6 months depending on the complexity of the workloads and architecture, we’ll help you modernize your Apache Kafka workloads to transform them into microservices. The process will save costs and time for your business, by breaking down monolithic structures that need a lot more resources to handle.