Round-robining to aws kinesis streams - amazon-web-services

As an alternative to resharding which causes much latency how can we dynamically create aws kinesis streams and round-robin-ing to streams?

I have solved this partially by taking the sample stream messages of 2000 from the twitter hosebird- client.
I have created 3 AWS Kinesis Streams each getting 500 messages and calling the next AWS Kinesis Stream by automatically(java - code).
For the last 500 messages the last stream again called the first stream.
Is this the right approach ?
I am trying do this by the concept given in the book : Concepts of OS by Galvin and apply the same for multiple AWS Kinesis Streams.

Related

AWS: reading Kinesis Stream data using Kinesis Firehose in a different account

We have a team writing data into into Kinesis Stream on their account (Acc A). I want to consume this data in my account (Acc B) ideally using Kinesis Firehose and just moving that data into S3.
I went through pages and pages of AWS documentation but I haven't found an answer. Is it possible to consume data from Kinesis Stream using Firehose which is in a different AWS Account. And if yes, then how and if not, what would be the most straight forward solution to get this data and move it to S3?
Bear in mind that the owners of the Stream refuse to do any changes in their architecture.
Thank you for any help.
I would recommend to convice the source account owner to create an kinesis delivery stream on their side to push data into your S3 bucket. This is much easier.
Never the less, if this is not an option you can create a Kinesis Data Analytics Stream to consume data from another account which you then can pump into S3 using a Kinesis Delivery Stream.
A similiar approach is explained here: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/kinesisanalytics/latest/java/examples-cross.html
Having a Kinesis Data Stream connecting directly to Kinesis Firehose in a different account is right now not possible. But, you could for example use a lambda function to transfer data between cross account - This is a setup I am using and it works fine. This could be quite expensive depending on the amount of data.
There is a tutorial available here - only difference to your requirement is that this lambda is based in account A.

When do I need to Kinesis Data Streams together with Kinesis Firehose?

I want to build a use case where I want to do real time analytics. I am not sure when it is necessary to use Kinesis Data Streams before Kinesis Firehose. In the documentation it says that Kinesis Firehose can get the data from Kinesis Data Streams but the use cases are not clear.
https://aws.amazon.com/kinesis/data-firehose/faqs/?nc=sn&loc=5
So the benefit of using Kinesis Firehose to have data passed from Kinesis Data Streams is that it integrates directly with the following services: S3, Redshift, ElasticSearch Service, Splunk.
If you want your streamed data to be delivered to any of those endpoints by passing to Firehose you can have it do the work for you.
Traditionally you'd write your own consumer which would be another piece of code to develop and maintain if it breaks. But using Firehose you can rely on AWS to do this part for you.

Kinesis Analytics Destination Guidance: Lambda vs Kinesis Stream to Lambda

After Kinesis Analytics does it's job, the next step is to send that information off to a destination. AWS currently offers 3 destination choices:
Kinesis stream
Kinesis Firehose delivery stream
AWS Lambda function
For my use case, Kinesis Firehose delivery stream is not what I want so I am left with:
Kinesis stream
AWS Lambda function
If I set the destination to a Kinesis Stream, I would then attach a Lambda to that stream to process the records.
AWS also offers the ability to set the destination to a Lambda, bypassing the Kinesis Stream step of this process. In doing some digging for docs I found this:
Using a Lambda Function as Output
Specifically in those docs under Lambda Output Invocation Frequency it says:
If records are emitted to the destination in-application stream within the data analytics application as a continuous query or a sliding window, the AWS Lambda destination function is invoked approximately once per second.
My Kinesis Analytics output qualifies under this scenario. So I can assume that my Lambda will be invoked, "approximately once per second".
I'm trying to understand the difference between using these 2 destinations as it pertains to using a Lambda.
Using AWS Lambda with Kinesis states that:
You can subscribe Lambda functions to automatically read batches of records off your Kinesis stream and process them if records are detected on the stream. AWS Lambda then polls the stream periodically (once per second) for new records.
So it sounds like the the invocation interval is the same in either case; approximately 1 second.
So I think the guidence is:
If the next stage in the pipeline only needs one consumer, then use the AWS Lambda function destination. If however, you need to use multiple different consumers to do different things for the same data sent to the destination, the a Kinesis Stream is more appropriate.
Is this a correct assumption on how to choose a destination? Again, for my use case I am excluding the Kinesis Firehose delivery stream.
If the next stage in the pipeline only needs one consumer, then use the AWS Lambda function destination. If however, you need to use multiple different consumers to do different things for the same data sent to the destination, the a Kinesis Stream is more appropriate.
• I would always use Kinesis Stream with one shard and batch size = 1 (for example) if I wanted the items to be consumed one by one with no concurrency.
If there are multiple consumers, increase the number of shards, one lambda is launched in parallel for each shard when there are items to process. If it makes sense, also increase the batch size.
But read again at the highlighted phrase below:
If however, you need to use multiple different consumers to do different things for the same data sent to the destination, the a Kinesis Stream is more appropriate.
If you have one or more producers and many consumers of the exactly same item, I guess you need to use SNS. The producer writes the item on one topic, then all the lambdas listening to the topic will process that item.
If this does not answer your question, please clarify it. There is a little ambiguity.

Is Kinesis Firehose a replacement to Kinesis Streams?

Kinesis Firehose, as well as Kinesis Streams, are used to load streaming data as per the details mentioned in the AWS blogs. There is no concept of shards or maintenance in case of Firehose. In such a case, Is Kinesis Firehose a replacement to Kinesis Streams?
Amazon Kinesis Firehose is an easy way to create a stream where data is sent to one of:
Amazon S3
Amazon Redshift
Amazon Elasticache
You can also create a Lambda function that can manipulate the data on the way through.
If the above suits your needs, then Firehose could be considered a replacement for Kinesis Streams. However, Kinesis Streams offers more flexibility so it is not an exact replacement.
Kinesis Firehose is not a replacement to Kinesis Streams although there are several use cases, Kinesis Firehose has taken over after its introduction.
Kinesis Streams is used to buffer the streaming data from producers and streaming it into custom applications for data processing and analysis which will consume the temporary buffered stream data.
Data producers push data to Kinesis Streams -> Applications read the data from stream and process.
Kinesis Firehose is used to capture and load streaming data into other Amazon services such as S3 and Redshift so that analysis can take place later on.
Data producers push data to Kinesis Firehose -> Data Transformation using Lambda -> Store in S3 or Redshift.
These two can also be used in combination where, Kinesis Streams can stream the data in to Kinesis Firehose so that, it could be persisted after processing.
A thing to take into account when choosing which service to use are the limits and scalability of each solution.
AWS Firehose has a fixed limit of 5mb/sec or 5000 rec/sec (details here), although it can be increased by contacting AWS through a request form.
On the other hand, AWS Kinesis can be scaled easily by increasing the number of shards for each Stream (up to 500 shards by default). The main issue here is that each shard has its own cost and you can only scale up or down by doubling the current amount of shards.
As Ashan said, these services serve different purposes, but you can use each one on its own, or combine them according to your needs. The main advantage here, is that Kinesis Stream can be consumed by many consumers, and be fed by many producers. On the other hand, Firehose Streams act as a consumer for other source of data (such as a Kinesis Stream) and can output data to only one destination (S3, Redshit, Elasticsearch, Splunk).
Not sure how it would be a replacement if there is no persistence of data with Kinesis Firehose, unless you mean it in the context of there is no need for data persistence or perhaps its an issue of cost, then your option would be to analyze that data as soon as it comes in which is Kinesis Firehose and eventually storing it in S3 or ElasticSearch Cluster.
No, just different purposes.
With Kinesis Streams, you build applications using the Kinesis Producer Library put the data into a stream and then process it with an application that uses the Kinesis Client Library and with Kinesis Connector Library send the processed data to S3, Redshift, DynamoDB or ElasticSearch.
With Kinesis Firehose it’s a bit simpler where you create the delivery stream and send the data to S3, Redshift or ElasticSearch (using the Kinesis Agent or API) directly and storing it in those services.
Kinesis Streams, on the other hand, can store the data for up to 7 days.
You may use Kinesis Streams if you want to do some custom processing with streaming data. With Kinesis Firehose you are simply ingesting it into S3, Redshift, DynamoDB or ElasticSearch.

How to fanout an AWS kinesis stream?

I'd like to fanout/chain/replicate an Input AWS Kinesis stream To N new Kinesis streams, So that each record written to the input Kinesis will appear in each of the N streams.
Is there an AWS service or an open source solution?
I prefer not to write code to do that if there's a ready-made solution. AWS Kinesis firehose is a no solution because it can't output to kinesis. Perhaps a AWS Lambda solution if that won't be too expensive to run?
There are two ways you could accomplish fan-out of an Amazon Kinesis stream:
Use Amazon Kinesis Analytics to copy records to additional streams
Trigger an AWS Lambda function to copy records to another stream
Option 1: Using Amazon Kinesis Analytics to fan-out
You can use Amazon Kinesis Analytics to generate a new stream from an existing stream.
From the Amazon Kinesis Analytics documentation:
Amazon Kinesis Analytics applications continuously read and process streaming data in real-time. You write application code using SQL to process the incoming streaming data and produce output. Then, Amazon Kinesis Analytics writes the output to a configured destination.
Fan-out is mentioned in the Application Code section:
You can also write SQL queries that run independent of each other. For example, you can write two SQL statements that query the same in-application stream, but send output into different in-applications streams.
I managed to implement this as follows:
Created three streams: input, output1, output2
Created two Amazon Kinesis Analytics applications: copy1, copy2
The Amazon Kinesis Analytics SQL application looks like this:
CREATE OR REPLACE STREAM "DESTINATION_SQL_STREAM"
(log VARCHAR(16));
CREATE OR REPLACE PUMP "COPY_PUMP1" AS
INSERT INTO "DESTINATION_SQL_STREAM"
SELECT STREAM "log" FROM "SOURCE_SQL_STREAM_001";
This code creates a pump (think of it as a continual select statement) that selects from the input stream and outputs to the output1 stream. I created another identical application that outputs to the output2 stream.
To test, I sent data to the input stream:
#!/usr/bin/env python
import json, time
from boto import kinesis
kinesis = kinesis.connect_to_region("us-west-2")
i = 0
while True:
data={}
data['log'] = 'Record ' + str(i)
i += 1
print data
kinesis.put_record("input", json.dumps(data), "key")
time.sleep(2)
I let it run for a while, then displayed the output using this code:
from boto import kinesis
kinesis = kinesis.connect_to_region("us-west-2")
iterator = kinesis.get_shard_iterator('output1', 'shardId-000000000000', 'TRIM_HORIZON')['ShardIterator']
records = kinesis.get_records(iterator, 5)
print [r['Data'] for r in records['Records']]
The output was:
[u'{"LOG":"Record 0"}', u'{"LOG":"Record 1"}', u'{"LOG":"Record 2"}', u'{"LOG":"Record 3"}', u'{"LOG":"Record 4"}']
I ran it again for output2 and the identical output was shown.
Option 2: Using AWS Lambda
If you are fanning-out to many streams, a more efficient method might be to create an AWS Lambda function:
Triggered by Amazon Kinesis stream records
That writes records to multiple Amazon Kinesis 'output' streams
You could even have the Lambda function self-discover the output streams based on a naming convention (eg any stream named app-output-*).
There is a github repo from Amazon lab providing the fanout using lambda. https://github.com/awslabs/aws-lambda-fanout . Also read "Transforming a synchronous Lambda invocation into an asynchronous one" on https://medium.com/retailmenot-engineering/building-a-high-throughput-data-pipeline-with-kinesis-lambda-and-dynamodb-7d78e992a02d , which is critical to build a truly asynchronous processing.
There are two AWS native solutions to fanning out Kinesis streams that don't require AWS Firehose or AWS Lambda.
Similar to Kafka consumer groups, Kinesis has the application name. Every consumer to the stream can provide a unique application name. If two consumer has the same application name, then messages are distributed between them. To fan out the stream, provide a different application name for those consumers that you want to receive the same messages from the stream. Kinesis will, under the hood, create new DynamoDB tables to keep track of each consumer for each new application so that they can consume messages at a different rate, etc.
Use Kinesis Enhanced Fan-Out for higher throughput (up to 2MiB per second) and this does not count towards your global read limit. At the time of writing, there is a limit of 20 "enhanced fan-out" consumers per stream.
One caveat as far I am aware with these two options is that you need to use the Kinesis Client Library (KCL) (and not the raw AWS SDK).