Apache NiFi Reviews

I use Apache NiFi to build workflows.

It's an event that is used for distributed messaging. You need to transfer the message that comes into Kafka Broker Topic.

You get the messages in the Kafka queue topic, you transform it and send it to other entities for storage, or you can return it back to Kafka to send to the consumer.

It's very handy.

I like building the independent flow. 

It's an automated flow, where you can build a flow from source to destination, then do the transformation in between.

Integration with Kafka and different data formats would be helpful, not only in JSON but in Avro, which is the data platform that is in a universal format.

I think the UI interface needs to be more user-friendly. The UI portal needs a lot of improvement for people who have less experience.

I have been using this solution for a year.

It's very stable, but I have not used it in production. I have used it in development and QA and I have tested it on various platforms with Kafka distributed messaging.

I have not needed Apache support. With my seniority, I have not used anything that requires their support.

It's a good thing to be able to go back in the documentation and the information is enough to get you going. 

Juniors or people who have less experience may have a lot of different questions, but I have not tested their support.

You have to install it on your platform using the Windows and Linux Operating System, or any Mac OS.

The Apache documentation is very straightforward. You can do it independently of any other guidance. 

It's self-explanatory. 

You can do it yourself without any hiccups, It's straightforward.

I am not involved in this area. I don't have any visibility in the costing and licensing.

We have a department that goes through the licensing and once we approve the functions and the performance of Apache NiFi, they deal with it.

You have to independently develop a use case for using NiFi, then test it and do the integration to have a stable workflow. After this, you jump in and integrate with Kafka distributed messaging and also connecting to your MDM database.

I would rate Apache NiFi an eight out of ten.

It is really good when it comes to dealing with pipelines.

Visually, this is a good product.

The challenge with Apache NiFi is that it's not cloud-native. This makes it different from our workflow.

The operations are over-complicated and when you build your pipeline, it's a nightmare to follow them. Then, as your pipeline or workflow becomes more complex, the operation of it gets worse. It is not easy to use and it requires a bigger ramp-up than any other solution that we have seen.

We have been using Apache NiFi for between five and six years.

This is a very solid product.

Scaling this product means using a bigger and more powerful machine. If it were cloud-native then it would be different.

We have used similar solutions like Apache Airflow, StreamSets, and others. The ramp-up for NiFi is a lot bigger and you have to spend a lot of time to understand how to use it.

There are some claims that NiFi is cloud-native but we have tested it, and it's not.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.