I want to plan an architecture based on GCP cloud platform. Below are the subject areas what I have to cover. Can someone please help me to find out the proper services which will perform that operation?
Data ingestion (Batch, Real-time, Scheduler)
Data profiling
AI/ML based data processing
Analytical data processing
Elastic search
User interface
Batch and Real-time publish
Security
Logging/Audit
Monitoring
Code repository
If I am missing something which I have to take care then please add the same too.
GCP offers many products with functionality that can overlap partially. What product to use would depend on the more specific use case, and you can find an overview about it here.
That being said, an overall summary of the services you asked about would be:
1. Data ingestion (Batch, Real-time, Scheduler)
That will depend on where your data comes from, but the most common options are Dataflow (both for batch and streaming) and Pub/Sub for streaming messages.
2. Data profiling
Dataprep (which actually runs on top of Dataflow) can be used for data profiling, here is an overview of how you can do it.
3. AI/ML based data processing
For this, you have several options depending on your needs. For developers with limited machine learning expertise there is AutoML that allows to quickly train and deploy models. For more experienced data scientists there is ML Engine, that allows training and prediction of custom models made with frameworks like TensorFlow or scikit-learn.
Additionally, there are some pre-trained models for things like video analysis, computer vision, speech to text, speech synthesis, natural language processing or translation.
Plus, it’s even possible to perform some ML tasks in GCP’s data warehouse, BigQuery in SQL language.
4. Analytical data processing
Depending on your needs, you can use Dataproc, which is a managed Hadoop and Spark service, or Dataflow for stream and batch data processing.
BigQuery is also designed with analytical operations in mind.
5. Elastic search
There is no managed Elastic search service directly provided by GCP, but you can find several options on the marketplace, like an API service or a Kubernetes app for Google’s Kubernetes Engine.
6. User interface
If you are referring to a user interface for your own use, GCP’s console is what you’d be using. If you are referring to a UI for end-users, I’d suggest using App Engine.
If you are referring to a UI for data exploration, there is Datalab, which is essentially a managed notebook service, and Data Studio, where you can build plots of your data in real time.
7. Batch and Real-time publish
The publishing service in GCP, for both synchronous and asynchronous messages is Pub/Sub.
8. Security
Most security concerns in GCP are addressed here. Which is a wide topic by itself and should probably need a separate question.
9. Logging/Audit
GCP uses Stackdriver for logging of most of its products, and provides many ways to process and analyze those logs.
10. Monitoring
Stackdriver also has monitoring features.
11. Code repository
For this there is Cloud Source Repositories, which integrate with GCP’s automated build system and can also be easily synched with a Github repository.
12. Analytical data warehouse
You did not ask for this one, but I think it's an important part of a data analysis stack.
In the case of GCP, this would be BigQuery.
Related
I am trying to implement a data quality framework for an application which ingests data from various systems(batch, near real time, real time). Few items that I want to highlight here are:
The data pipelines widely vary and ingest very high volumes of data. They are developed using spark,python,emr clusters, kafka, Kinesis stream
Any new system that we onboard in the framework, it should be easily
able to include the data quality checks with minimal coding. so some sort of metadata framework might help for ex: storing the business rules in dynamodb which can automatically run check different feeders/new data pipeline created
Our tech stack includes AWS,Python,Spark, Java, so kindly advise related services(AWS Databrew, PyDeequ, Greatexpectations libraries, various lambda event driven services are some I want to focus)
I am also looking for some sort of audit, balance and control mechanism. Auditing the source data, balancing # of records between 2 points and have some automated mechanism to remediate(control) them.
I am looking for testing frameworks for the different data pipelines.
Also for data profiling, kindly advise tools/libraries, Aws data brew, Pandas are some I am exploring.
I know there wont be one specific solution, and hence appreciate all and any different ideas. A flow diagram with Audit, balance and control with automated data validation and testing mechanism for data pipelines can be very helpful.
Thanks!!!
Cloud Data Fusion offers the ability to create ETL jobs using their graphical pipeline UI representation whereas Dataproc lets us run previously created Spark/Hadoop/Hive jobs.
With my limited experience in both these services, I have found Cloud Data Fusion to be the easier of the two to use & manage. I would like to know the use cases in which creating & running jobs in Dataproc is preferred over Cloud Data Fusion.
You asked for an opinion, so your question should be closed...
Anyway, it mainly depends on what you prefer! If you are a developer, and you want to handle, manage, customize/tweak all the steps your pipeline for performance, observability or security reason, code, and Dataproc is better for you. Same reason if all your developers already know the Hadoop ecosystem.
If you prefer to focus on the data transformation/wrangling with low/no code solution, Data fusion is for you. Especially if you have a few or no skills in development (business users).
At the end, all the pipeline will run on Dataproc.
I have heterogeneous sources like flat files residing on prem, json on share point, api which serves data so and so. Which is the best etl tool to bring data to bigquery environment ?
Im a kinder garden student in GCP :)
Thanks in advance
There are many solutions to achieve this. It depends on several factors some of which are:
frequency of data ingestion
whether or not the data needs to be
manipulated before being written into bigquery (your files may not
be formatted correctly)
is this going to be done manually or is this going to be automated
size of the data being written
If you are just looking for an ETL tool you can find many. If you plan to scale this to many pipelines you might want to look at a more advanced tool like Airflow but if you just have a few one-off processes you could set up a Cloud Function within GCP to accomplish this. You can schedule it (via cron), invoke it through HTTP endpoint, or pub/sub. You can see an example of how this is done here
After several tries and datalake/datawarehouse design and architecture, I can recommend you only 1 thing: ingest your data as soon as possible in BigQuery; no matter the format/transformation.
Then, in BigQuery, perform query to format, clean, aggregate, value your data. It's not ETL, it's ELT: you start by loading your data and then you transform them.
It's quicker, cheaper, simpler, and only based on SQL.
It works only if you use ONLY BigQuery as destination.
If you are starting from scratch and have no legacy tools to carry with you, the following GCP managed products target your use case:
Cloud Data Fusion, "a fully managed, code-free data integration service that helps users efficiently build and manage ETL/ELT data pipelines"
Cloud Composer, "a fully managed data workflow orchestration service that empowers you to author, schedule, and monitor pipelines"
Dataflow, "a fully managed streaming analytics service that minimizes latency, processing time, and cost through autoscaling and batch processing"
(Without considering a myriad of data integration tools and fully customized solutions using Cloud Run, Scheduler, Workflows, VMs, etc.)
Choosing one depends on your technical skills, real-time processing needs, and budget. As mentioned by Guillaume Blaquiere, if BigQuery is your only destination, you should try to leverage BigQuery's processing power on your data transformation.
My organization plans to store a set of data in BigQuery and would like to periodically extract some of that data and bring it back to an on-premise database. In reviewing what I've found online about Dataflow, the most common examples involve moving data in the other direction - from an on-premise database into the cloud. Is it possible to use Dataflow to bring data back out of the cloud to our systems? If not, are there other tools that are better suited to this task?
Abstractly, yes. If you've got a set of sources and syncs and you want to move data between them with some set of transformations, then Beam/Dataflow should be perfectly suitable for the task. It sounds like you're discussing a batch-based periodic workflow rather than a continuous streaming workflow.
In terms of implementation effort, there's more questions to consider. Does an appropriate Beam connector exist for your intended on-premise database? You can see the built-in connectors here: https://beam.apache.org/documentation/io/built-in/ (note the per-language SDK toggle at top of page)
Do you need custom transformations? Are you combining data from systems other than just BigQuery? Either implies to me that you're on the right track with Beam.
On the other hand, if your extract process is relatively straightforward (e.g. just run a query once a week and extract it), you may find there are simpler solutions, particularly if you're not moving much data and your database can ingest data in one of the BigQuery export formats.
Is it possible to read form Kafka or Google Pub/Sub in a Dataprep Job?
If so, any 'best practice' deployment considerations I should expect when the samples are edited on board an "oh so snappy, live and responsive" a la visual studio (minus the ability to purchase or download the tool) whereas debugging the production flow (same "type" of data") is performed on top of anything but such tools (coding Scala/Java on our favorite IDE)?
There is not a native way to read from a message system, like Kafka or Pub/Sub, directly into Cloud Dataprep.
I'd recommend an alternative approach:
Stream the data into BigQuery and then read the data from BQ
Write the stream data to Cloud Storage and then load the data
Both approaches will require writing the data to an intermediate location beforehand. I'd recommend BQ if you have needs for low latency, performance, or query-ability in the future. I'd recommend GCS for low-cost when speed is not critical.