What is ApsaraMQ for Confluent?
ApsaraMQ for Confluent is a fully managed data streaming service on Alibaba Cloud built on Confluent Platform. It handles message stream processing and big data integration without the operational overhead of self-managed Apache Kafka.
Prerequisites
Before you read this topic, you should be familiar with the following concepts:
Confluent Platform
Confluent Platform is an enterprise streaming platform built by the original creators of Apache Kafka. It extends Apache Kafka with capabilities for stream processing, event transformations, security, and large-scale operations while reducing management and monitoring overhead.
Confluent Platform lets you focus on business value rather than managing how data moves between systems. Common use cases include financial services, omnichannel retail, autonomous driving, fraud detection, microservices, and IoT. For more information, see Confluent Platform Overview.
How ApsaraMQ for Confluent works
Alibaba Cloud is the first cloud provider to partner with Confluent in the Chinese mainland. Through this partnership, Alibaba Cloud delivers ApsaraMQ for Confluent as a turnkey streaming solution. You purchase an Enterprise Edition Kafka Confluent cluster through Alibaba Cloud Marketplace based on your workload requirements and start streaming within the hour.
ApsaraMQ for Confluent addresses two challenges:
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Licensed enterprise Kafka in the cloud: Get authorized Confluent Platform licenses at a lower cost than self-managed deployments.
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Fast cluster provisioning: Complete model selection, cluster deployment, and message event management in less than an hour — no manual infrastructure setup required.
Benefits
Confluent expertise built in
The Confluent team writes and commits 80% of Apache Kafka's codebase and has over 1 million hours of experience building and supporting Apache Kafka. This expertise translates into:
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Enterprise-grade security, scalability, and compliance out of the box.
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Shorter time to market for event-driven architectures at scale.
High reliability and throughput
| Metric | Target |
|---|---|
| Service availability | Up to 99.9% (less than 8.76 hours of downtime per year) |
| Data reliability | Up to 99.999999% (eight 9s) |
Automatic inspection and O&M capabilities help maintain these targets. ApsaraMQ for Confluent sustains high throughput even under heavy message accumulation, and messages are persistently enqueued to guard against data loss.
Managed operations and observability
Alibaba Cloud provides a dedicated operations team and an advanced monitoring system for each ApsaraMQ for Confluent deployment:
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HouseKeeping: Checks the status of core links, scans and diagnoses cluster health at 1-minute intervals, generates alerts for unhealthy instances, and delivers daily inspection reports.
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Consumer group monitoring: Tracks message accumulation per consumer group and alerts on exceptions so issues surface before they affect production.
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API operations: A full set of APIs for programmatic resource management and operational automation.
Instant activation
ApsaraMQ for Confluent is fully managed. Activate the service and start producing and consuming messages immediately — no cluster setup, capacity planning, or infrastructure provisioning required.
Seamless migration
Migrate workloads from Confluent Cloud, Confluent Platform, or self-managed Apache Kafka clusters without modifying application code. ApsaraMQ for Confluent supports auto scaling, high availability, and global deployment, reducing migration costs and technical risk.
What to do next
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Get started: Create your first ApsaraMQ for Confluent cluster through Alibaba Cloud Marketplace.
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Explore pricing: Review cluster specifications and pricing options for your workload.
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Plan a migration: Learn how to migrate from an existing Kafka deployment to ApsaraMQ for Confluent.