The Kafka community faces a critical decision regarding the future of the project as it considers three competing KIPs aimed at reducing high replication costs across cloud availability zones while integrating object storage. The article explores two main approaches: a revolutionary path that embraces a direct-to-S3 architecture for greater elasticity and an evolutionary path that adapts existing components to reduce immediate refactoring needs. Ultimately, the choice made will shape the direction of Kafka for the next decade.

The article explores three approaches to diskless Kafka, focusing on Slack’s KIP-1176 (Fast Tiering), Aiven’s KIP-1150 (Diskless Topics), and KIP-1183 (AutoMQ). Each proposal aims to optimize Kafka's storage and replication strategies in the cloud, balancing cost, performance, and architectural integrity. The discussion highlights the strengths and weaknesses of these innovations while considering their potential integration into the Apache Kafka ecosystem.