What is Apache Flume?

Apache Flume is a standard, simple, robust, flexible and extensible tool for data ingestion and transfer of data from various data producers(webservers) into Hadoop. The main purpose of Apache Flume is to move streaming data generated by various applications to Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS).

Figure 1 : Apache Flume Architecture

Below are some of the key components of Apache Flume architecture:

Apache Flume Agent: Flume agent is an independent JVM process in Apache Flume. Flume agent receives events from clients or other Flume agents and it passes them to its next destination which can either be sink other agents.

Source: Source receives data from data generators and transfers the received data to one or more channels in the form of events.

Channels: The channel receives data in the form of events from the source and buffers the events until the sink (or sinks) is ready to consume. It acts as transient store for the data.

Sink: The sink consumes data from the channel and stores the same in destination. The destination can be centralized store like HDFS or other Flume agent.

The architecture diagram in fig. 1 shows an example Apache Flume configuration where data is generated through various sources like social media, cloud, webservers etc., is captured by Flume and is stored in HDFS for long term storage.

Why Monitor Apache Flume?

In mission-critical environments, even the slightest of deficiencies in the performance of the Apache Flume server if not detected promptly and resolved quickly, can result in irredeemable loss of critical data. To avoid such data loss and to ensure availability of data round the clock, the Apache Flume server should be monitored periodically. For this purpose, eG Enterprise offers a specialized Apache Flume server monitoring model.

By closely monitoring the target Apache Flume server, administrators can be proactively alerted to issues in the overall performance and critical operations of the server, identify serious issues, and plug the holes before any data loss occurs.