Real-Time Event Streaming Platform

The Challenge

Handling a high-velocity, unpredictable firehose of webhook data (1,000+ events/minute) from social media APIs. The goal was to build a highly available platform capable of real-time processing with zero data loss.

The Strategy

Implemented an event-driven architecture using a self-managed Apache Kafka cluster as the durable message bus. Leveraged Docker Swarm for lightweight microservices orchestration and AWS (EC2, ASG, ALB) for infrastructure resilience.

Implementation Details

• Architecture: Deployed multi-AZ AWS infrastructure with EC2, Auto Scaling Groups, and ALB for high availability.
• Streaming: Built a self-managed Apache Kafka cluster to decouple producers from consumers and ensure data durability.
• Orchestration: Used Docker Swarm to manage Python-based microservices for real-time data processing.
• Observability: Implemented custom monitoring for Consumer Group Lag and Broker Disk I/O to prevent bottlenecks.