Realtime Compute for Apache Flink:What is Alibaba Cloud Realtime Compute for Apache Flink?

Type

Open source Flink

Realtime Compute for Apache Flink

Cloud advantages

Performance and cost

• No built-in elastic scaling capability

• Resource utilization depends on manual tuning

• Through SQL operator optimization and self-developed state storage kernel Gemini, performance reaches twice that of open source Flink in Nexmark stream computing tests.

• Supports Autopilot, solving various performance issues such as insufficient job throughput, backpressure in the entire pipeline, and resource waste. It automatically monitors and adjusts job resource allocation without manual intervention.

• Supports fine-grained resource configuration at the operator level (CPU/Mem), improving resource utilization by 100% for large-scale jobs.

• More flexible payment models, supporting Subscription, Pay-as-you-go or Hybrid billing, with CU-level billing.

Flexible payment models and better performance help enterprises reduce costs. CU-level intelligent scaling improves resource utilization

Compatibility and integration capabilities

• Native Flink SQL and DataStream API

• Requires manual integration of components such as MySQL, Kafka, Paimon, with frequent version updates potentially causing compatibility issues

• Fully compatible with mainstream Flink APIs (SQL, Java, Python, YAML).

• Provides 30+ ready-to-use connectors (such as MySQL, Kafka, Hologres, Paimon), supporting various storage types including databases, message middleware, data warehouses, lake formats, and file systems.

• Allows registration of custom connectors to interface with external systems as needed.

• Supports multiple Flink versions coexisting, enabling seamless migration and upgrades.

Lowers entry barriers, improves ecosystem integration efficiency, and ensures smooth business migration

Development efficiency and debugging experience

• Lacks an end-to-end development management platform

• Limited debugging tools

• Supports whole database synchronization, database and table sharding synchronization, table schema change synchronization, and integrated full read from replica and incremental read from master (CDAS/CTAS).

• Multi-version job management (code comparison and rollback), supporting integration with remote Git repositories (such as GitHub, GitLab, or Gitee).

• Built-in native Flink functions, supporting custom function management and use; provides more than 20 Flink SQL templates for common scenarios.

• Supports test data management, quick run debugging, intermediate result display, development-production isolation, and integrates with VS Code local development tool.

Reduces development difficulty, decreases debugging and testing costs, improves job deployment speed and quality

Operations and management capabilities

• No built-in comprehensive monitoring and alerting system

• Lacks graphical operation interface

• Manual scaling, complex resource scheduling

• Provides a visualization console integrating job management, status monitoring, and log tracking, improving O&M efficiency.

• Supports multi-dimensional metric monitoring and intelligent aggregation, quickly identifying common issues such as latency, skew, and backpressure.

• Built-in real-time alerting mechanism, supporting multiple notification methods including DingTalk, email, text message, and can integrate with enterprise-level monitoring systems (such as Prometheus).

• Supports dynamic configuration adjustments (without restart), with intelligent diagnostic capabilities that can quickly identify job abnormalities, TM disconnections, and other issues, providing log localization and optimization suggestions.

Significantly reduces O&M costs and optimization difficulty. Fine-grained resource management substantially reduces costs. Improves job observability and response efficiency

Stability and reliability

• Cluster deployment has regional limitations

• Fault tolerance mechanism depends on user configuration

• Same-city high availability architecture, multiple regions available, ensuring business stability.

• Full-chain automatic fault tolerance capability, supporting JobManager high availability, system without single points of failure, more stable.

• Supports system checkpoint and job snapshot lifecycle management, with state compatibility checking and data migration capabilities, maximizing reuse of existing state data.

Ensures stable operation of large-scale jobs, meeting enterprise-level production environment requirements

Enterprise-level service capabilities

• Relies on community documentation, forums, and other unofficial support

• No dedicated technical support team

• Provides 24/7 professional technical support, backed by in-house employee maintenance services, with 99.9% SLA guarantee.

• Rapid response mechanism, supporting customized requirements.

• Continuous update and maintenance plan, providing long-term version support (LTS).

Obtains professional, trustworthy technical assurance, accelerating problem resolution and business deployment

Security and access control

• Basic authentication mechanisms (such as Kerberos)

• Permission control requires integration with external systems

• Interoperable with Alibaba Cloud account system, supporting fine-grained RBAC (Role-Based Access Control).

• Supports tenant-level and project-level resource and code isolation, meeting cross-team collaboration requirements.

• Implements secure key management through variable management, reducing security risks from plaintext key exposure.

• Comprehensive operation audit records all production changes.

Builds unified identity authentication system, ensuring data asset security and compliance

Extensibility and multi-ecosystem integration

• Can extend functionality through plugin mechanisms

• Ecosystem integration depends on community or developer maintenance

• Supports emerging scenarios such as AI and intelligent data analytics.

• Deep integration with data lakes (Iceberg, Hudi), data warehouses (ClickHouse, Hologres, MaxCompute).

• Provides SDK and OpenAPI support for secondary development.

Creates a flexible, extensible unified real-time platform supporting diverse business scenarios