Our primary use case is having our PostgreSQL and MySQL databases hosted by Aiven Platform. They serve as our production databases.

One of the most valuable features of Aiven Platform is that it handles the upgrades for us seamlessly, saving us time that would be spent on routine upgrades. It also provides reliable backups. The ability to minimize disruption during upgrades is very important since any database downtime would mean system-wide disruptions.

I would really like to see Aiven Platform add a user interface for database backups, as this would eliminate the need for a third-party solution. Additionally, the customer service could be more responsive to regain my trust as it felt inefficient in the past.

I have been using Aiven Platform for eight years.

Customer service usually responds promptly, but there have been times when communication felt like throwing an inquiry over a wall and waiting for a reply. It detracted from getting a quick understanding and solution for challenges.

Positive

We used Engine Yard's support for databases before switching to Aiven Platform. Every upgrade was a hassle and nerve-wracking. We by usign Aiven we needed fewer servers because of we did need serves to hodt the PG and MySql databases.

The cost for hosting with Aiven Platform seems high compared to managing it ourselves.

In our experience, we encountered issues with Aiven Platform's connection to Redis. It was not smooth, and though we like the solution overall, we are hesitant about using Redis integration again. Additionally, on a scale of one to ten, I would rate Aiven Platform a nine due to the alck of an interface for backups and a more responsive customer service.

I use Aiven for Apache Kafka to handle services dependent on each other. Instead of API calls, we use it for asynchronous processing of all our services. That's the general way we use it.

What I like best about the tool is that the process for the services is faster compared to other methods. It's easier to use because Aiven for Apache Kafka handles the maintenance, so we have less to manage. We only use Kafka to manage its connectivity.

One challenge we face is when we want to update the version, for example, from 3.6 to 3.7. It will spawn new nodes, and then there's rebalancing and syncing from other brokers. There's high CPU usage during this process, so the solution can't be used for a while, causing some downtime in our services. To tackle this challenge, we schedule maintenance updates during low-traffic periods when there's less risk and fewer users use the services.

I have been using the product since 2020. 

I think scalability is quite challenging. When we upgrade the machine or disk or change the machine nodes, the new node needs to rebalance and sync with other brokers. This causes high CPU usage and disrupts Aiven for Apache Kafka and all our services. That's the main challenge for scalability. I'd rate the scalability around seven or eight out of ten, as long as you know the strategy for scaling.

We haven't had any significant issues so far. Our manager can escalate issues to the solution's engineers even when we have issues. They provide a fast response to our incidents and solve our issues. After solving the problem, the engineers also look into the issue to find the root cause.

We've contacted their support before. We submit support tickets and follow up with our account manager. The account manager can then follow up with the engineers, which helps the ticket get processed faster.

Their support team has several experts, especially in Apache Kafka. We can always ask them about specific issues. For example, our principal engineer once asked about Kafka offset, and the account manager was able to handle it and provide best practices.

Positive

The tool's deployment is easy. We choose the VPC, the region, and whether we use the solution's VPC or our own. We select the version and the plan (basic or business), create the service, and it is ready to use after a few minutes. That's one of the best things about deploying it. 

For security, our services use the solution's default authorization. We have to authenticate and use either SASL or a keystore file for authorization. This ensures that anyone outside our network can't access the topics.

Apache Kafka is really good for streaming data or messaging services. It's comparable to other messaging services.

Overall, I'd rate Aiven for Apache Kafka an eight out of ten.