Understand MSK Connect

MSK Connect is a feature of Amazon MSK that makes it easy for developers to stream data to and from their Apache Kafka clusters. MSK Connect uses Kafka Connect 2.7.1, an open-source framework for connecting Apache Kafka clusters with external systems such as databases, search indexes, and file systems. With MSK Connect, you can deploy fully managed connectors built for Kafka Connect that move data into or pull data from popular data stores like Amazon S3 and Amazon OpenSearch Service. You can deploy connectors developed by 3rd parties like Debezium for streaming change logs from databases into an Apache Kafka cluster, or deploy an existing connector with no code changes. Connectors automatically scale to adjust for changes in load and you pay only for the resources that you use.

Use source connectors to import data from external systems into your topics. With sink connectors, you can export data from your topics to external systems.

MSK Connect supports connectors for any Apache Kafka cluster with connectivity to an Amazon VPC, whether it is an MSK cluster or an independently hosted Apache Kafka cluster.

MSK Connect continuously monitors connector health and delivery state, patches and manages the underlying hardware, and autoscales the connectors to match changes in throughput.

To get started using MSK Connect, see Getting started with MSK Connect.

To learn about the AWS resources that you can create with MSK Connect, see Understand connectors, Create custom plugins, and Understand MSK Connect workers.

For information about the MSK Connect API, see the Amazon MSK Connect API Reference.

Benefits of using Amazon MSK Connect

Apache Kafka is one of the most widely adopted open source streaming platforms for ingesting and processing real-time data streams. With Apache Kafka, you can decouple and independently scale your data-producing and data-consuming applications.

Kafka Connect is an important component of building and running streaming applications with Apache Kafka. Kafka Connect provides a standardized way of moving data between Kafka and external systems. Kafka Connect is highly scalable and can handle large volumes of data Kafka Connect provides a powerful set of API operations and tools for configuring, deploying, and monitoring connectors that move data between Kafka topics and external systems. You can use these tools to customize and extend the functionality of Kafka Connect to meet the specific needs of your streaming application.

You might encounter challenges when you’re operating Apache Kafka Connect clusters on their own, or when you’re trying to migrate open source Apache Kafka Connect applications to AWS. These challenges include time required to setup infrastructure and deploying applications, engineering obstacles when setting up self-managed Apache Kafka Connect clusters, and administrative operational overhead.

To address these challenges, we recommend using Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka Connect (Amazon MSK Connect) to migrate your open source Apache Kafka Connect applications to AWS. Amazon MSK Connect simplifies using Kafka Connect to stream data to and from between Apache Kafka clusters and external systems, such as databases, search indexes, and file systems.