Automated Continuous FTP Replication to Apache Kafka

Always-on applications rely on automatic failover capabilities and real-time data access. CData Sync integrates live FTP data into your Apache Kafka instance, allowing you to consolidate all of your data into a single location for archiving, reporting, analytics, machine learning, artificial intelligence and more.

Configure Apache Kafka as a Replication Destination

Using CData Sync, you can replicate FTP data to Kafka. To add a replication destination, navigate to the Connections tab.

1. Click Add Connection.
2. Select Apache Kafka as a destination.
3. Enter the necessary connection properties:
   • Bootstrap Servers - Enter the address of the Apache Kafka Bootstrap servers to which you want to connect.
   • Auth Scheme - Select the authentication scheme. Plain is the default setting. For this setting, specify your login credentials:
   • User - Enter the username that you use to authenticate to Apache Kafka.
   • Password - Enter the password that you use to authenticate to Apache Kafka.
   • Type Detection Scheme - Specify the detection-scheme type (None, RowScan, SchemaRegistry, or MessageOnly) that you want to use. The default type is None.
   • Use SSL - Specify whether you want to use the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol. The default value is False.
4. Click Test Connection to ensure that the connection is configured properly.
5. Click Save Changes.

Configure the FTP Connection

You can configure a connection to FTP from the Connections tab. To add a connection to your FTP account, navigate to the Connections tab.

1. Click Add Connection.
2. Select a source (FTP).
3. Configure the connection properties.
   
   

   To connect to FTP or SFTP servers, specify at least RemoteHost and FileProtocol. Specify the port with RemotePort.

   Set User and Password to perform Basic authentication. Set SSHAuthMode to use SSH authentication. See the Getting Started section of the data provider help documentation for more information on authenticating via SSH.

   Set SSLMode and SSLServerCert to secure connections with SSL.

   The data provider lists the tables based on the available folders in your FTP server. Set the following connection properties to control the relational view of the file system:

   • RemotePath: Set this to the current working directory.
   • TableDepth: Set this to control the depth of folders to list as views.
   • FileRetrievalDepth: Set this to retrieve and list files recursively from the root table.

   Stored Procedures are available to download files, upload files, and send protocol commands. See the Data Model chapter of the FTP data provider documentation for more information.

4. Click Connect to ensure that the connection is configured properly.
5. Click Save Changes.

Configure Replication Queries

CData Sync enables you to control replication with a point-and-click interface and with SQL queries. For each replication you wish to configure, navigate to the Jobs tab and click Add Job. Select the Source and Destination for your replication.

Replicate Entire Tables

To replicate an entire table, click Add Tables in the Tables section, choose the table(s) you wish to replicate, and click Add Selected Tables.

Customize Your Replication

You can use the Columns and Query tabs of a task to customize your replication. The Columns tab allows you to specify which columns to replicate, rename the columns at the destination, and even perform operations on the source data before replicating. The Query tab allows you to add filters, grouping, and sorting to the replication.

Schedule Your Replication

In the Schedule section, you can schedule a job to run automatically, configuring the job to run after specified intervals ranging from once every 10 minutes to once every month.

Once you have configured the replication job, click Save Changes. You can configure any number of jobs to manage the replication of your FTP data to Kafka.