Kafka Streams for Predictive Maintenance with AWS MSK

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

Kafka Streams is a client library for building applications and microservices where the input and output data are stored in Kafka clusters. Predictive maintenance applications benefit from Kafka Streams' capabilities to process streams of data in real-time. AWS Managed Streaming for Kafka (MSK) makes it easy to build and run applications that process highly distributed data streams.

In this guide, I'm going to walk you through setting up the infrastructure required for a Kafka Streams application for predictive maintenance using AWS MSK. We will set up an MSK cluster and configure the necessary resources using Pulumi in Python.

First, let's talk about the resources we need:

1. **AWS MSK Cluster**: This is the managed Kafka service provided by AWS. It runs Apache Kafka for us, so we don't need to manage the underlying Kafka infrastructure.

2. **IAM role and policy**: We will create an IAM role and attach policies that allow our MSK cluster to interact with other AWS services, such as CloudWatch for logging.

3. **VPC, Subnet, and Security Group**: Kafka clients will connect to the MSK cluster within a VPC. We need subnets and a security group to control access to the Kafka cluster.

4. **Configuration**: We will define a Kafka configuration that determines the properties of our topics and other Kafka cluster settings.

Here's how we can define these resources using Pulumi and Python:

```python
import pulumi
import pulumi_aws as aws

# Creating a VPC, subnets, and a security group for the MSK Cluster
vpc = aws.ec2.Vpc("vpc", cidr_block="10.0.0.0/16")

# Create Subnets in two different Availability Zones for high availability
subnet_one = aws.ec2.Subnet("subnet-one",
                             vpc_id=vpc.id,
                             cidr_block="10.0.1.0/24",
                             availability_zone="us-west-2a")
                             
subnet_two = aws.ec2.Subnet("subnet-two",
                             vpc_id=vpc.id,
                             cidr_block="10.0.2.0/24",
                             availability_zone="us-west-2b")

# Security Group to control access to the MSK Cluster
security_group = aws.ec2.SecurityGroup("security-group",
                                       vpc_id=vpc.id,
                                       description="Allow all inbound traffic for MSK",
                                       ingress=[{"protocol": "-1", "from_port": 0, "to_port": 0, "cidr_blocks": ["0.0.0.0/0"]}])

# IAM Role and Policy for MSK
msk_role = aws.iam.Role("msk-role", assume_role_policy={
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [{
        "Action": "sts:AssumeRole",
        "Principal": {
            "Service": "kafka.amazonaws.com"
        },
        "Effect": "Allow",
        "Sid": ""
    }]
})

msk_policy = aws.iam.RolePolicy("msk-policy",
                                role=msk_role.id,
                                policy=pulumi.Output.all(vpc.id, subnet_one.id, subnet_two.id).apply(
                                    lambda args: json.dumps({
                                        "Version": "2012-10-17",
                                        "Statement": [{
                                            "Effect": "Allow",
                                            "Action": "logs:CreateLogGroup",
                                            "Resource": f"arn:aws:logs:*:*:log-group:/aws/kafka/*"
                                        }, {
                                            "Effect": "Allow",
                                            "Action": [
                                                "logs:CreateLogStream",
                                                "logs:PutLogEvents",
                                                "logs:DescribeLogStreams"
                                            ],
                                            "Resource": [
                                                f"arn:aws:logs:*:*:log-group:/aws/kafka/*"
                                            ]
                                        }]
                                    })))

# Define MSK Cluster configuration information
kafka_configuration = aws.msk.Configuration("kafka-configuration",
                                            kafka_versions=["2.6.1"],
                                            server_properties="""auto.create.topics.enable=true
delete.topic.enable=true
default.replication.factor=3
min.insync.replicas=2""")

# MSK Cluster
msk_cluster = aws.msk.Cluster("msk-cluster",
                              cluster_name="predictive-maintenance",
                              kafka_version="2.6.1",
                              number_of_broker_nodes=3,
                              broker_node_group_info={
                                  "instance_type": "kafka.m5.large",
                                  "ebs_volume_size": 1000,
                                  "client_subnets": [subnet_one.id, subnet_two.id],
                                  "security_groups": [security_group.id]
                              },
                              encryption_info={
                                  "encryption_at_rest_kms_key_arn": aws.kms.Key("example").arn
                              },
                              configuration_info={
                                  "arn": kafka_configuration.arn,
                                  "revision": kafka_configuration.latest_revision
                              },
                              client_authentication={
                                  "tls": {"enabled": True}
                              },
                              logging_info={
                                  "broker_logs": {
                                      "cloudwatch_logs": {
                                          "enabled": True,
                                          "log_group": msk_policy.id
                                      },
                                      "s3": {
                                          "enabled": False
                                      },
                                      "firehose": {
                                          "enabled": False
                                      }
                                  }
                              })

pulumi.export("msk_cluster_arn", msk_cluster.arn)
pulumi.export("msk_cluster_bootstrap_brokers", msk_cluster.bootstrap_brokers)
```

In this program:

- We set up the necessary VPC resources to define our network topology.
- We create an MSK Configuration to set various Kafka properties like topic auto-creation and replication factors.
- We set up the MSK Cluster with the desired Kafka version, node group info, and logging. The `broker_node_group_info` defines the details of the broker nodes, including the instance type and storage.
- We also create an IAM Role and Policy to grant our MSK cluster the necessary permissions to interact with other AWS services, such as CloudWatch Logs.
- In the end, we export the MSK Cluster ARN and bootstrap brokers details that you would use to connect to your Kafka cluster from your application.

With these exports, you will have the necessary connection details to configure your Kafka Streams application for predictive maintenance.

Remember, this is just the infrastructure code. You will have to write the Kafka Streams application logic as a separate piece of software and then deploy and connect it to this Kafka infrastructure.