An Introductory Look at AWS Kinesis

26.03.2023 — aws, kinesis — 8 min read

AWS Kinesis is a fully managed service offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that makes it easy to collect, process, and analyze real-time, streaming data in the cloud. With Kinesis, developers can create custom applications that analyze large volumes of streaming data, such as log files, clickstreams, sensor data, and social media feeds, in near real-time. Kinesis can handle terabytes of data per hour from hundreds of thousands of sources simultaneously. It is scalable, highly available, and reliable, with built-in security features and compliance certifications.

Kinesis Streams

Kinesis Streams is a core component of Kinesis that allows developers to build custom applications that collect, process, and analyze streaming data in real-time. Kinesis Streams works by creating a data stream, which is a sequence of data records that are stored for up to seven days. Each data record consists of a partition key, a sequence number, and a data blob. The partition key determines which shard in the stream the data record is written to, and the sequence number ensures that the data is processed in the order it was received.

Kinesis Streams is designed to be highly scalable, with the ability to handle millions of data records per second, distributed across multiple shards. This makes it suitable for use cases such as real-time data processing, real-time analytics, and data replication.

Kinesis Firehose

Kinesis Firehose is another component of Kinesis that simplifies the process of loading streaming data into AWS services, such as Amazon S3, Amazon Redshift, and Amazon Elasticsearch Service. Kinesis Firehose works by creating a delivery stream, which is a destination for streaming data. Developers can configure the delivery stream to transform and compress the data before it is loaded into the destination service.

Kinesis Firehose is fully managed, meaning that AWS takes care of the infrastructure and maintenance of the service. It is highly scalable, with the ability to handle up to terabytes of data per hour, and integrates seamlessly with other AWS services, such as Lambda and CloudWatch.

Kinesis Analytics

Kinesis Analytics is a component of Kinesis that allows developers to run real-time SQL queries on streaming data, without the need for any infrastructure management. Kinesis Analytics works by creating an application, which is a collection of SQL statements that define the processing of streaming data.

Developers can use Kinesis Analytics to perform tasks such as filtering, aggregating, and joining streaming data in real-time, to gain insights and make decisions based on the data. Kinesis Analytics is integrated with Kinesis Streams and Kinesis Firehose, allowing developers to easily process and analyze streaming data from these sources.

Relationship Between These Services

An analogy to understand the relationship between Kinesis, Kinesis Data Streams, Kinesis Firehose, and Kinesis Analytics is to think of a water treatment plant.

Kinesis can be thought of as the entire water treatment plant, which takes in raw water and processes it into clean, usable water. Similarly, Kinesis is a managed service that processes large amounts of data, in the form of streaming data, into usable insights.

Kinesis Data Streams can be thought of as the pipelines in the water treatment plant that carry water from one place to another. In Kinesis, data streams act as the channels that receive and transmit streaming data. They are scalable and durable, and allow for the real-time processing of large data volumes.

Kinesis Firehose can be thought of as the purification stage in the water treatment plant where sediment, contaminants, and impurities are removed from the water. Similarly, Kinesis Firehose is a fully managed service that can be used to collect, transform, and deliver streaming data to destinations such as S3, Redshift, and Elasticsearch for further processing and analysis.

Kinesis Analytics can be thought of as the control system in the water treatment plant that monitors and adjusts the process to ensure the water is being treated correctly. In Kinesis, analytics is a fully managed service that provides real-time data analysis on streaming data. It allows you to write SQL queries to analyze and gain insights from your data in real-time, without having to manage the underlying infrastructure.

Kinesis Data Streams API

The Kinesis Data Streams API is a set of APIs that developers can use to interact with Kinesis Streams programmatically. The API provides functions for creating and managing data streams, putting data records into a stream, getting data records from a stream, and more.

Developers can use the Kinesis Data Streams API to build custom applications that interact with Kinesis Streams, and integrate Kinesis with other AWS services.

Here is an example of using the Kinesis Data Streams API in Java:

import software.amazon.awssdk.auth.credentials.DefaultCredentialsProvider;
import software.amazon.awssdk.regions.Region;
import software.amazon.awssdk.services.kinesis.KinesisClient;
import software.amazon.awssdk.services.kinesis.model.*;

import java.nio.ByteBuffer;
import java.util.UUID;

public class KinesisAPIExample {

    private static final String STREAM_NAME = "my-stream";
    private static final String PARTITION_KEY = "partition-key-1";

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        KinesisClient kinesisClient = KinesisClient.builder()
                .region(Region.US_EAST_1)
                .credentialsProvider(DefaultCredentialsProvider.create())
                .build();

        // create stream
        CreateStreamRequest createStreamRequest = CreateStreamRequest.builder()
                .streamName(STREAM_NAME)
                .shardCount(1)
                .build();

        kinesisClient.createStream(createStreamRequest);

        // put record
        PutRecordRequest putRecordRequest = PutRecordRequest.builder()
                .streamName(STREAM_NAME)
                .partitionKey(PARTITION_KEY)
                .data(ByteBuffer.wrap("Hello Kinesis!".getBytes()))
                .build();

        PutRecordResponse putRecordResponse = kinesisClient.putRecord(putRecordRequest);
        System.out.println("Record put with sequence number: " + putRecordResponse.sequenceNumber());

        // get records
        String shardIteratorType = ShardIteratorType.TRIM_HORIZON.toString();
        GetShardIteratorRequest getShardIteratorRequest = GetShardIteratorRequest.builder()
                .streamName(STREAM_NAME)
                .shardId("shardId-000000000000")
                .shardIteratorType(shardIteratorType)
                .build();

        GetShardIteratorResponse getShardIteratorResponse = kinesisClient.getShardIterator(getShardIteratorRequest);
        String shardIterator = getShardIteratorResponse.shardIterator();

        GetRecordsRequest getRecordsRequest = GetRecordsRequest.builder()
                .shardIterator(shardIterator)
                .build();

        GetRecordsResponse getRecordsResponse = kinesisClient.getRecords(getRecordsRequest);
        System.out.println("Records retrieved: " + getRecordsResponse.records().size());
    }
}

This example shows how to create a stream, put a record into the stream, and retrieve records from the stream using the Kinesis Data Streams API in Java. It uses the AWS SDK for Java v2 and includes the necessary credentials and region configuration. Note that the code above assumes that you have already created an AWS Kinesis stream with the name "my-stream".

Integrating Kinesis With Other AWS Services

Kinesis can be integrated with other AWS services to create end-to-end streaming data processing solutions. For example, Kinesis Streams can be integrated with Lambda to perform real-time processing on incoming data records, or with Amazon S3 to store processed data records for later analysis.

Kinesis Firehose can be integrated with Amazon Redshift to load streaming data into a data warehouse, or with Amazon Elasticsearch Service to perform real-time analysis on streaming data. Kinesis Analytics can be integrated with Amazon CloudWatch to monitor the performance of the application and detect anomalies.

Security and Compliance

Kinesis provides a range of security features to ensure that streaming data is protected and meets regulatory requirements. Here are some of the security features of Kinesis:

Encryption: Kinesis encrypts all data at rest using AWS Key Management Service (KMS) or customer-managed keys. Data in transit is also encrypted using Transport Layer Security (TLS).
Access control: Kinesis integrates with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), which allows fine-grained access control to Kinesis resources. IAM policies can be used to grant or deny access to specific Kinesis streams, as well as specific operations on those streams.
Compliance: Kinesis is compliant with various regulatory requirements, such as HIPAA, SOC 1, SOC 2, and PCI DSS. Customers can use Kinesis to process and store regulated data, as long as they configure it in accordance with the relevant regulations and standards.
Monitoring and auditing: Kinesis integrates with AWS CloudTrail, which logs all API calls made to Kinesis streams, as well as other AWS services. This provides a detailed audit trail of activity, which can be used for compliance, security, and troubleshooting purposes.

In addition to these security features, Kinesis also provides best practices for securing Kinesis streams, such as using IAM roles for EC2 instances that access Kinesis, enabling Amazon VPC for added security, and using cross-account access for sharing Kinesis streams between AWS accounts.

Best Practices for Using Kinesis

To get the most out of Kinesis and ensure optimal performance, there are some best practices to follow:

Design for scale: Kinesis is designed to handle massive amounts of data, so it's important to design for scale from the start. This includes distributing data across multiple shards, using partition keys effectively, and monitoring shard utilization.
Minimize costs: Kinesis can be cost-effective if used properly, but costs can quickly add up if not managed carefully. Some ways to minimize costs include choosing the appropriate shard size, enabling shard-level metrics to monitor shard usage, and using Kinesis Data Firehose for direct delivery to S3 or Redshift.
Use Kinesis Analytics for real-time data processing: Kinesis Analytics allows you to process and analyze streaming data in real-time, without the need for separate batch processing. This can reduce latency and improve decision-making capabilities.
Integrate with other AWS services: Kinesis integrates with a wide range of AWS services, such as Lambda, S3, and Redshift, to enable powerful data processing and analytics workflows. This allows you to process and analyze streaming data in real-time, without the need for separate batch processing.

Final Thoughts

Overall, the Kinesis suite of services provides a complete and scalable solution for processing, analyzing, and delivering real-time streaming data to a variety of destinations, making it a powerful tool for businesses looking to gain insights from their data.