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When to Choose Apache Kafka vs. Azure Event Hubs vs. Confluent Cloud for a Microsoft Fabric Lakehouse

Kai Waehner
10 min readJan 17, 2025

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Choosing between Apache Kafka, Azure Event Hubs, and Confluent Cloud for data streaming is critical when building a Microsoft Fabric Lakehouse. Apache Kafka offers scalability and flexibility but requires self-management and additional features for security and governance. Azure Event Hubs provides a fully managed service with tight Azure integration but has limitations in Kafka compatibility, scalability, and advanced features. Confluent Cloud delivers a complete, managed data streaming platform for analytical and transactional scenarios with enterprise features like multi-cloud support and disaster recovery. Each option caters to different needs, and this blog post will guide you in selecting the right data streaming solution for your use case.

This is part three of a blog series about Microsoft Fabric and its relation to other data platforms on the Azure cloud:

  1. What is Microsoft Fabric for Azure Cloud (Beyond the Buzz) and how it Compares (or Competes) with Snowflake and Databricks
  2. How Microsoft Fabric Complements Data Streaming (Apache Kafka, Flink, et al.)
  3. When to Choose Apache Kafka vs. Azure Event Hubs vs. Confluent Cloud for a Microsoft Fabric Lakehouse

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Kai Waehner
Kai Waehner

Written by Kai Waehner

Technology Evangelist — www.kai-waehner.de → Big Data Analytics, Data Streaming, Apache Kafka, Middleware, Microservices => linkedin.com/in/kaiwaehner

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