AWS Kinesis vs. Google Cloud Pub Sub
When it comes to real-time data streaming, AWS Kinesis and Google Cloud Pub Sub are two popular platforms. While understanding their differences, strengths, and limitations, one will be able to choose the most suitable and efficient service for their business.
AWS Kinesis
Amazon Web Services (AWS) Kinesis is a fully-managed platform used for real-time streaming of big data on the cloud. It's designed to collect, process, and analyze the data streams coming from different sources, all in real-time. AWS Kinesis offers three different types;
- Kinesis Streams: used for handling large amounts of data, allowing multiple consumers to read from, and multiple producers to write to, the same stream.
- Kinesis Firehose: provides a managed solution for loading data streams into AWS services like S3, Redshift, or Elasticsearch.
- Kinesis Analytics: allows writing SQL code to analyze the data streaming and derive insights.
AWS Kinesis has a simple pricing model; it charges according to the amount of data transferred out of Kinesis data streams.
Google Cloud Pub Sub
Google Cloud Pub Sub is Google's real-time messaging service available on the Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Pub Sub enables applications to exchange messages reliably, asynchronously, and at scale. It's scalable in terms of transmitting data payloads up to several terabytes, thus can handle big data.
Google Cloud Pub Sub has two primary services:
- Pub/Sub Messaging: It allows clients to produce and consume messages asynchronously. Messages can be sent and received independently.
- Pub/Sub Lite: A regional service for publishing and consuming messages with an emphasis on availability and performance in supported regions.
Google Cloud Pub Sub offers a flexible pricing model, charging per operation with no minimum fee.
Performance
Both Kinesis and Pub Sub can handle high levels of throughput and offer fast data transfer rates. However, Kinesis is more suitable for high velocity, low volume data; while Pub Sub is more adequate for high volume data due to its infrastructure powered with Google Cloud Dataflow.
Latency
Latency is the time taken to transfer data from the producer to the consumer. As for Kinesis, the latency can range from 70ms up to several hundred milliseconds. For Pub Sub, on the other hand, the latency can range from 10ms up to a few seconds.
Conclusion
If you are looking for a service to handle low volume data in real-time, AWS Kinesis could be the right choice for you. However, if you are processing high-volume data and are looking for flexible pricing with no minimum fee, Google Cloud Pub Sub could be the platform for you. Both are highly performant real-time platforms and choosing one depends on the specific requirements and use cases.