Kafka Manager vs Kowl

Overview

Kafka Manager

Stacks70

Followers173

Votes1

Kowl

Stacks12

Followers17

Votes0

Kafka Manager vs Kowl: What are the differences?

Introduction

Kafka Manager and Kowl are both tools used for managing Apache Kafka clusters. While they have similar functionalities, there are key differences between the two that set them apart.

Scalability: Kafka Manager is designed for managing multiple Kafka clusters and offers scalability in terms of handling a large number of clusters. On the other hand, Kowl is designed to scale horizontally, allowing it to handle high message throughput efficiently.
User Interface: Kafka Manager provides a web-based user interface that allows users to easily manage Kafka clusters and topics. Kowl, on the other hand, offers a modern and responsive user interface that provides real-time insights and metrics about Kafka topics and partitions.
Security: Kafka Manager lacks built-in security features and does not provide authentication or authorization mechanisms out of the box. Kowl, on the other hand, offers robust security functionalities such as authentication and authorization, enabling better control over access to Kafka resources.
Real-time Monitoring: Kafka Manager provides basic monitoring capabilities, such as viewing consumer groups and topic details. However, Kowl offers advanced real-time monitoring and visualization features, allowing users to monitor consumer lag, topic activity, and broker health in real-time.
Custom Metrics and Alerts: Kafka Manager does not provide the ability to define custom metrics or set up alerts based on specific conditions. Kowl, on the other hand, allows users to define custom metrics and set up alerts, enabling proactive monitoring and alerting in case of issues.
Compatibility: Kafka Manager is primarily designed for Apache Kafka 0.8 and 0.9 versions, although it can also work with newer versions. Kowl, on the other hand, is built for newer versions of Apache Kafka (0.11 and above) and takes advantage of the latest features and improvements introduced in those versions.

In Summary, Kafka Manager is more focused on cluster management and scalability, while Kowl offers a modern user interface, real-time monitoring, enhanced security features, and compatibility with newer versions of Apache Kafka.

Share your Stack

Help developers discover the tools you use. Get visibility for your team's tech choices and contribute to the community's knowledge.

View Docs

CLI (Node.js)

Manual

Detailed Comparison

Kafka Manager	Kowl
This interface makes it easier to identify topics which are unevenly distributed across the cluster or have partition leaders unevenly distributed across the cluster. It supports management of multiple clusters, preferred replica election, replica re-assignment, and topic creation. It is also great for getting a quick bird’s eye view of the cluster.	It is a web application that helps you to explore messages in your Apache Kafka cluster and get better insights on what is actually happening in your Kafka cluster in the most comfortable way.
Manage multiple clusters;Easy inspection of cluster state (topics, brokers, replica distribution, partition distribution);Run preferred replica election;Generate partition assignments (based on current state of cluster);Run reassignment of partition (based on generated assignments)	Supports Kafka Clusters newer than v1.0+; Topic overview; Show disk usage per topic or per broker; List all consumer groups of a given topic; List topic configuration; Message viewer; Avro, JSON, XML, ASCII and binary support; Search specific message using any filters written in JavaScript; Consumer group lag monitoring; Very good UI & UX
Statistics
Stacks 70	Stacks 12
Followers 173	Followers 17
Votes 1	Votes 0
Pros & Cons
Pros 1 Better Insights for Kafka cluster	No community feedback yet
Integrations
Kafka	Kafka

What are some alternatives to Kafka Manager, Kowl?

Kafka REST

It provides a RESTful interface to a Kafka cluster. It makes it easy to produce and consume messages, view the state of the cluster, and perform administrative actions without using the native Kafka protocol or clients. Examples of use cases include reporting data to Kafka from any frontend app built in any language, ingesting messages into a stream processing framework that doesn't yet support Kafka, and scripting administrative actions.

rdkafka

This gem is a modern Kafka client library for Ruby based on librdkafka. It wraps the production-ready C client using the ffi gem and targets Kafka 1.0+ and Ruby 2.3+.

Kafka UI

It is a simple tool that makes your data flows observable, helps find and troubleshoot issues faster and deliver optimal performance. Its lightweight dashboard makes it easy to track key metrics of your Kafka clusters - Brokers, Topics, Partitions, Production, and Consumption.

Kafdrop

It is a web UI for viewing Kafka topics and browsing consumer groups. The tool displays information such as brokers, topics, partitions, consumers, and lets you view messages.

KafkaHQ

It is a Kafka GUI for topics, topics data, consumers group, schema registry, connect and more. It works with modern Kafka cluster.

Lenses

It is a simple and secure self service DataOps platform, to operate with confidence on Apache Kafka & Kubernetes.

DoctorKafka

DoctorKafka can automatically detect broker failure and reassign the workload on the failed nodes to other nodes. DoctorKafka can also perform load balancing based on topic partitions's network usage, and makes sure that broker network usage does not exceed the defined settings.

KafkaCenter

It is a unified one-stop platform for Kafka cluster management and maintenance, producer / consumer monitoring, and use of ecological components.

Kattlo CLI

It is for enterprises that need a stable way to change Apache Kafka configurations. It maintains the configuration and avoids drifts.

Monokl

It is an open source downloadable desktop tool that works across all platforms and provides a simple way to visualize the performance of your Kafka cluster.

Related Comparisons

Kafka Manager vs Kowl: What are the differences?

Introduction

Kafka Manager and Kowl are both tools used for managing Apache Kafka clusters. While they have similar functionalities, there are key differences between the two that set them apart.

Scalability: Kafka Manager is designed for managing multiple Kafka clusters and offers scalability in terms of handling a large number of clusters. On the other hand, Kowl is designed to scale horizontally, allowing it to handle high message throughput efficiently.
User Interface: Kafka Manager provides a web-based user interface that allows users to easily manage Kafka clusters and topics. Kowl, on the other hand, offers a modern and responsive user interface that provides real-time insights and metrics about Kafka topics and partitions.
Security: Kafka Manager lacks built-in security features and does not provide authentication or authorization mechanisms out of the box. Kowl, on the other hand, offers robust security functionalities such as authentication and authorization, enabling better control over access to Kafka resources.
Real-time Monitoring: Kafka Manager provides basic monitoring capabilities, such as viewing consumer groups and topic details. However, Kowl offers advanced real-time monitoring and visualization features, allowing users to monitor consumer lag, topic activity, and broker health in real-time.
Custom Metrics and Alerts: Kafka Manager does not provide the ability to define custom metrics or set up alerts based on specific conditions. Kowl, on the other hand, allows users to define custom metrics and set up alerts, enabling proactive monitoring and alerting in case of issues.
Compatibility: Kafka Manager is primarily designed for Apache Kafka 0.8 and 0.9 versions, although it can also work with newer versions. Kowl, on the other hand, is built for newer versions of Apache Kafka (0.11 and above) and takes advantage of the latest features and improvements introduced in those versions.

Kafka Manager vs Kowl

Overview

Kafka Manager vs Kowl: What are the differences?