Kafka MirrorMaker vs Pulsar Geo-Replication: Best Practices for Disaster Recovery

Session Overview

In an increasingly globalized business environment, ensuring continuous data availability is more critical than ever. This session explores two key tools for enabling cross-region data replication in the Apache Kafka and Apache Pulsar ecosystems: Kafka MirrorMaker and Pulsar Geo-Replication. Both play vital roles in disaster recovery strategies, yet they offer unique features, trade-offs, and operational challenges. We'll begin by discussing the core principles of disaster recovery and the role geo-replication plays in achieving high availability. The talk will then provide a detailed comparison between Kafka MirrorMaker and Pulsar Geo-Replication, covering their architectures, configuration complexities, performance characteristics, and typical use cases. Through practical examples, attendees will learn the strengths and limitations of each tool, helping them to make informed decisions for their disaster recovery planning. Attendees will leave with actionable best practices for implementing geo-replication, insights into common pitfalls, and strategies to align these tools with their business continuity objectives. Whether you rely on Kafka or Pulsar, this session will equip you with the knowledge to strengthen your disaster recovery strategy and ensure your data remains accessible even during catastrophic events.

About Speaker

Matteo Merli Matteo is the CTO at StreamNative, where he brings rich experience in distributed pub-sub messaging platforms. Matteo was one of the co-creators of Apache Pulsar during his time at Yahoo!. Matteo worked to create a global, distributed messaging system for Yahoo!, which would later become Apache Pulsar. Matteo is the PMC Chair of Apache Pulsar, where he helps to guide the community and ensure the success of the Pulsar project. He is also a PMC member for Apache BookKeeper. Matteo lives in Menlo Park, California.