Universal Linking: Seamless Data Replication Across Kafka and Pulsar

StreamNative Announces Ursa Engine GA on AWS and UniLink Migration Tool

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What is Universal Linking?

Universal Linking is a powerful, cost-effective solution for data replication and Kafka migration. With UniLink, you can seamlessly mirror data from any Apache Kafka protocol-compatible source cluster into Ursa—automatically replicating topics, consumer groups, schemas, ACLs, and configurations while preserving offsets.

Full-Fidelity Replication:

Mirror Your Kafka, Byte for Byte

Universal Linking captures every element—topics, offsets, consumer groups, schemas, and configurations—to create an exact copy of your Kafka topics. By preserving data integrity down to the byte, we eliminate replication drift and the environment behaves exactly the same.

Cost-Effective & Low Overhead:

Slash Expenses, Not Performance

UniLink cuts replication costs with smart zone-aware reads and direct object storage integration. Skip the broker bottleneck: we stream data straight to cost-efficient cloud storage, slashing cross-AZ transfer fees and infrastructure overhead. Replicate more, spend less.

Seamless Kafka Migration:

Plug, Play, Scale

UniLink works with any Kafka-compatible system—Confluent, AWS MSK, Redpanda, or self-hosted Kafka. Migrate clusters, replicate data globally, or scale workloads seamlessly, all while keeping your existing infrastructure intact. Kafka’s power, minus the plumbing.

How Universal Linking Works

Link

Link any Kafka cluster to your Ursa cluster in just a few clicks.

1

Sync

Write to Ursa Streams, which are automatically compacted into Lakehouse tables in real time.

2

Consume

Seamlessly consume data as a Kafka topic or a Lakehouse table with stream-table duality.

3

Watch demo

Use Cases

Kafka Migration

Simplify Kafka cluster migrations (on-prem to cloud or cross-cloud) with UniLink by replicating every byte of your Kafka clusters—topics, consumer groups, schemas, and configurations without downtime. Preserve offsets and ensure application continuity during cutover.

Real-Time Data Lakehouse

Bridge Kafka’s real-time streaming data with modern lakehouse architectures. Continuously replicate Kafka topics into Delta Lake or Iceberg tables to fuel AI/ML pipelines, hybrid analytics (HTAP), and real-time decision-making.

More Use Cases

Lakehouse Tiered Storage

Offload your Kafka data to Ursa’s lakehouse storage layer, enabling massive read throughput without broker bottlenecks which can reduce Kafka spend by up to 20x.

Disaster Recovery

Replicate your primary Kafka cluster to a secondary Ursa cluster in real time. During outages, flip workloads instantly with no offset rewinds or data loss.

Cost-Effective Read Fanouts

Spin up isolated Kafka environments in Ursa for analytics, testing, or team-specific workflows. Store data once, then launch ephemeral Ursa brokers on demand.

Global Data Streaming

Store Kafka data once in Ursa, then spin up read-only clusters in any region. Serve users from the nearest replica to slash latency and comply with data residency rules.