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Pulsar Guide

A cloud-native, distributed messaging, and streaming platform offering best-in-class performance, durability, and ease-of-use.

Your Scalable Data-Driven Future Starts Today

Pandio’s Apache Pulsar is the most powerful, easy to use messaging solution that enables streams, queues, and pub-subs all in a single platform. 

No Operational Burden

We do the hard work for you. With Pandio’s experts by your side, you’ll have all the support you need to succeed.

Start Today, Scale Tomorrow

Pulsar’s flexibility makes it easy to scale and increase your capacity across hundreds of nodes as your needs change

Reliable, Low-Latency

Pulsar enables you to scale to more than a million topics with little latency (< 5ms) for publishing.

Zero Message Loss

Quorum replication ensures your messages are never lost.

 

Secure Service

End-to-end encryption means you can be confident your data is secure.

Works With Your Budget

Unlike similar services, Pulsar won’t bust your budget because you only pay for what you use and it’s ready to go in minutes.

Unprecedented Reliability

Pulsar’s proven capabilities have a 99.99% uptime guarantee SLA so you can run your mission-critical applications with confidence.

Apache Pulsar Features

Break down data silos across your organization, connect mission-critical systems, and enable machine learning and AI for real-time, reliable data-driven decisions with these Apache Pulsar features:

Functions

A lightweight compute framework that allows sinks, sources, and in-topic functions to be created in Java, Go, and Python. This allows events to be fed into, out of, and modified as they flow through Pulsar.

Geo-replication

Built as a first-class citizen for pulsar, geo-replication allows the automatic replication of namespaces across clusters with just a few configuration changes.

Kubernetes and Docker Integration

Being cloud native, it is a natural fit for Kubernetes and Docker. A free helm chart is available to get started.

Multi-Tenancy

Pulsar’s multi-tenant capabilities enable you to serve multiple applications within a shared environment with simplified architecture and management.

 

Unified Queues and Streams

You can both stream and queue within a single subscription model.

Powerful API

Use REST Admin API for administration, monitoring, provisioning, and other tools, as well as support for flexible messaging models with APIs like Go, C++, Python, and Java.

Neural Networks

Pulsar’s neural network enables you to manage distributed messaging while focusing on optimization, connectivity, and automation.

Persistent Storage

With Apache BookKeeper, count on persistent message storage with IO-level isolation between your write and read functions.

Reliable Customer Support

Pulsar’s data experts are always available to help troubleshoot or answer any questions you may have.

Apache Pulsar vs. Apache Kafka

When it comes to distributed messaging, a growing number of enterprises consistently choose Apache Pulsar over Apache Kafka. Here’s why:

Faster Benchmarking

Independent reports show that Pulsar outperforms Kafka with more than 2.5 times better throughput and 40% decreased latency. Streams events and messages 250% faster.

Native Geo-Replication

Native geo-replication is built within the core of Pulsar, but not Kafka. No separate tools needed.

Stream, Queue, and Pub-Sub

Unlike Kafka, Pulsar handles all your needs and combines streams, queues, and pub-subs all in one platform.

Decoupled Storage

Apache Pulsar’s multi-layered architecture decouples data processing and storage for improved performance.

Tiered Storage

Pulsar’s tiered storage means you can retain message backlogs indefinitely without needing partitions or paying for storage space you rarely use

Created for AI and Machine Learning

Unlike Kafka, Apache Pulsar is built for AI and machine learning, ensuring you always have reliable event streaming for better data-driven decisions.

Cloud Native

Pulsar is cloud-native, meaning your storage and compute levels can work independently and you can scale as your traffic needs change.

Pandio’s Apache Pulsar Consistently Outperforms Kafka

Apache Pulsar delivers the fastest and most reliable event-streaming for AI and machine learning. Zero message loss. Streams, queues, and pub-sub. Native geo-replication. Multi-tenant.

 

How it Works

Global Companies Rely on Pulsar for Distributed Messaging

Developed by Yahoo in 2013, today, companies around the globe in finance, retail, telecom, government, software and technology, and the media power their distributed messaging services with Apache Pulsar. 

 

Some companies that use Pulsar:

 

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Comcast Logo
Verizon Media
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Yahoo Japan Logo
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FAQ

Pandio’s Apache Pulsar is a distributed messaging and streaming system designed for big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. It’s an open sourced pub-sub messaging solution developed by Yahoo and is available through the Apache Software Foundation.

Apache Pulsar outperforms Kafka on almost every level. Here are a few examples:

  • When it comes to scalability, Kafka wasn’t designed to work in the sort of environments created by AI and machine learning, but Pulsar is.
  • Pulsar has better resource utilization and through-put.
  • Pulsar has significantly less latency than Kafka.
  • Pulsar is multi-tenancy so it can serve multiple applications (tenants) in a shared environment.
  • Pulsar is also more durable than Kafka with less message loss.

Click here to learn more about why Apache Pulsar Beats Kafka.

Here are a few examples of well-known companies that use Pulsar: 

  • BestPay
  • BrandsEye
  • China Telecom
  • Clever Cloud
  • Comcast
  • EMQ
  • Giggso
  • Globalegrow E-Commerce
  • IoTium
  • MaxKelsen
  • Mercado Libre
  • Narvar
  • Ndustrial.io
  • Nutanix
  • Okcoin
  • Onde
  • Overstock
  • ProxyClick
  • StreamNative
  • Tencent
  • The Hut Group
  • Toast
  • Verizon Media
  • VIP Kid
  • Yahoo Japan

The top three most common uses for Pulsar are asynchronous apps, building core business applications and extraction, transformation and loading. Companies also use Pulsar for: application monitoring, communications, business intelligence reports, IoT, machine learning, backed analytics.

Apache Pulsar is applicable across all industries. It’s for any organization interested in using AI and machine learning to help make better data-driven business decisions. 

Messages are the basic unit of Pulsar: The units that producers publish to topics and what consumers then consume from topics. Each message has a value or data payload representing the data the message carries. You can tag messages with keys, which help with topic management and you can optionally add user-defined properties. 

A Pulsar broker is a cluster component that runs dispatchers to handle message transfers as well as a server for topic lookup and administration.

Pulsar uses topics as channels to transmit messages from a producer to a consumer. Names for topics are structured URLs.

Pulsar uses a consumer to attach a topic through a subscription so it can receive messages.

Pub-sub stands for publish-subscribe pattern, which decouples services that publish events from services that process events.

Apache BookKeeper is the log storage service Pulsar uses to store your data.

If you have more questions check out our Reference Guide or speak to an expert.

Pandio Podcast

Want to learn more about Apache Pulsar while you’re on the go? Check out the Pandio Podcast and listen anytime, anywhere.

Here are some of our favorites:

Apache Pulsar vs. Apache Kafka

Pandio’s CTO, Josh Odmark introduces Pulsar, the most powerful distributed messaging solution available in the market today. Listen in as he discusses Pulsar’s benefits for enterprises that want to operationalize their AI/ML initiatives.

Scaling with Managed Pulsar Services

Pandio’s head of business development, Matt Rall, sits down with Intuizi’s Ron Donaire to talk about how Apache Pulsar is helping the company scale its messaging services and why they chose Pulsar over Apache Kafka.

Messaging Patterns Supported by Apache Pulsar

Pandio’s head of business development, Matt Rall, and senior client architect Kevin Way chat about distributed messaging patterns and what all-in-one messaging with Apache Pulsar actually means for users.

Apache Pulsar

Try Pandio’s fully managed Apache Pulsar service for free and start streaming on AWS, Azure and GCP clouds.