Lenses EC2
LensesReviews from AWS customer
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Easy to Use but Lacks Robust Documentation
What do you like best about the product?
I find Lenses to be extremely easy to use, which is a significant advantage in my work as a platform engineer on a Kafka platform. The intuitive design makes it accessible for both experienced individuals as well as those who are not very familiar with Kafka development. This ease of use extends to its specific SQL, which provides a straightforward way to troubleshoot problem cases and check topic metrics. The user-friendly nature of Lenses enhances productivity and efficiency, making my workflow smoother when dealing with complex tasks.
What do you dislike about the product?
There are ongoing bugs within Lenses that remain unresolved, highlighting a potential lack of responsiveness or prioritization in bug fixes, which affects my workflow. Additionally, there's a noted absence of a future vision for the product, hinting at stagnation or a lack of updates that keep pace with evolving user needs. A significant drawback is the insufficient and unclear documentation, which complicates the proper utilization and setup of certain features, including the use of their helm chart for setup. This lack of documentation makes it challenging to take full advantage of the product's capabilities. Overall, these issues contribute to a reluctance in recommending the product highly.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use Lenses to troubleshoot Kafka problems and check topic metrics. It's easy to use for both experienced and new Kafka developers, thanks to its specific SQL. However, some functions need better documentation and there are unsolved bugs.
The UI is simple and beginner-friendly, but may feel too basic for advanced users.
What do you like best about the product?
The UI is simple and effective. For example, the topics listing easy to use and start working with.
What do you dislike about the product?
The platform has shown little progress over the years. I have been using Lenses for more than three years, and there have not been any significant changes. When version 6 was released, it introduced a new interface, but the same issues remain: the ACLs listing is still too basic, there is no high availability, and the deployment process is complicated.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Data Observability and integration would my main purpose based on the user. It helps users to validate and audit the data they are producing or consuming and moving data from one place to another. Features like the SQL processors are really powerful tools but used mainly for validating that the data is in the right place.
Using Lenses for years, pros and cons
What do you like best about the product?
It is user friendly, easy to use and to get used to work with it. The amount of information shown and features is fine for a product like this
What do you dislike about the product?
Customer support and roadmap clarity definitely needs improvement, the product has been the same for the last years, lacking some features such as high availability. Any new feature has been released under additional licenses
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It offers a UI on top of the Kafka platform, providing product teams and users a visual experience of their assets
Reliable tool for managing and searching data streams
What do you like best about the product?
We’ve been using Lenses for about six years, and it’s been a solid part of our data workflow. The feature we lean on most is the ability to search and query data using SQL—it makes working with streams feel straightforward and familiar. The platform has been stable and dependable, and while it’s not showy, it does exactly what we need without unnecessary complexity.
We don’t actively use the API and admin capabilities these days, but they were really helpful earlier in our journey and gave us the flexibility we needed at the time. Overall, if you’re looking for a tool that keeps things simple and gets the job done, Lenses is a good choice.
We don’t actively use the API and admin capabilities these days, but they were really helpful earlier in our journey and gave us the flexibility we needed at the time. Overall, if you’re looking for a tool that keeps things simple and gets the job done, Lenses is a good choice.
What do you dislike about the product?
Some of the functionalities are not open-source and in our case, creates a vendor lock-in. SQL Processors is the most clear example.
Handy, but the tradeoff doesn't pay off in the long run for us.
This is not bad per se, but for us this fact has always been a no-go to adopt this type of functionalities.
Handy, but the tradeoff doesn't pay off in the long run for us.
This is not bad per se, but for us this fact has always been a no-go to adopt this type of functionalities.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Data searching capabilities and Kafka administration.
Lenses v4 and v6
What do you like best about the product?
Lenses provides the much-needed visibility to Kafka and replaces Kafka CLI commands with UI, plus many other features.
Lenses is compatible with our very out-dated Kafka version, which is much appreciated.
Lenses is compatible with our very out-dated Kafka version, which is much appreciated.
What do you dislike about the product?
The pre-v6 Lenses is deployed per environment, and in our case, we end up having 4 environments. The v6 Lenses solves this major problem.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
- Visibility, this allows developers to visualize, query, and troubleshoot Kafka issues much easier.
- Kafka management, this allows the infrastructure team to manage Kafka permissions, topic ACLs, topic configurations much easier.
- Kafka management, this allows the infrastructure team to manage Kafka permissions, topic ACLs, topic configurations much easier.
Lenses for understanding Kafka
What do you like best about the product?
Lenses provides a quick inside view of all you data flow.
It has helped our junior team coming from an SQL background to understand Kafka and its streaming nature much faster flattening the learning curve.
Personally, I love the support. Especially through slack the response is very quick and hands on.
It has helped our junior team coming from an SQL background to understand Kafka and its streaming nature much faster flattening the learning curve.
Personally, I love the support. Especially through slack the response is very quick and hands on.
What do you dislike about the product?
There is not much to dislike. Lenses provides us an inside view of our streaming data in a way we could not do before.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Lenses helps us create proof of concepts quickly using the SQL Processors and also we use it as a Kafka training tool for our engineers that haven't used Kafka in the past.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
Start off with the Docker Box installation to play around and join Slack. Once anyone gets a first feel of the product he/she will be impressed. Easy to use and very insightful.
DataOps for Kafka
What do you like best about the product?
Lenses is amazing at providing insights into the Kafka topics as well as offering a broad range of tools for administering Kafka data policies, ACLs, SQL Processors, Kafka Connectors. I appreciate how easy it is to explore data using the SQL Studio tool. Also the continuous monitoring and audit capabilities are providing good value and instant feedback about the state of the Kafka cluster.
What do you dislike about the product?
It would be nice to have a richer set of capabilities for supporting DataOps, such as the possibility of exporting and importing Data Policies, security configurations and ACLs in order to configure multiple instances of Lenses deployed in different environments.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Lenses is a great tool for opening access to the data stored in Kafka while ensuring a safe level of data access security using the Data Policies and Security Groups.
Invaluable tool for anyone using Kafka
What do you like best about the product?
A great way to sample and query data in a GUI. We didn't have a reliable way to do that before.
What do you dislike about the product?
Producing messages within Lenses seems to require that messages already exist on the topic, and if you use Avro, it will only use one schema for that topic.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Using Lenses, we realized our lo compaction strategy wasn't working. Lenses was a critical tool in finding the cause and fixing it.
Excellent addition to kafka
What do you like best about the product?
- Beautiful, responsive UI for kafka overview and with lenses SQL for kafka topics browsing
- Advanced kafka broker metrics which simplify monitoring and alerting
- Seamless data integration capabilities using lenses SQL processors
- Data protection policies and role based UI
- Schema registry integration for avro based payloads
- Advanced kafka broker metrics which simplify monitoring and alerting
- Seamless data integration capabilities using lenses SQL processors
- Data protection policies and role based UI
- Schema registry integration for avro based payloads
What do you dislike about the product?
- You need to use lenses UI for development of SQL processors: develop, export, import into prod. No developer centric workflow assumed
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
- Troubleshooting production incidents
- Overall visibility of data in kafka for all relevant people (due to role based access control and ability to mask data based on policies)
- Improved monitoring of kafka brokers
- Data integration scenarios can be done in minutes
- Overall visibility of data in kafka for all relevant people (due to role based access control and ability to mask data based on policies)
- Improved monitoring of kafka brokers
- Data integration scenarios can be done in minutes
Recommendations to others considering the product:
Try lenses box first to see if it suites your needs
Powerful tool for increased productivity
What do you like best about the product?
Lenses is an intuitive tool that provides great observability and management features for our streaming environment. It has some very useful interfaces for managing and querying Kafka topics. Lenses has proven to increase productivity in our environment by enabling developers to more quickly ascertain state.
What do you dislike about the product?
In the current release (3.2.1), some types of Kafka consumers (e.g. Apache Flink) appear as "inactive" even though they are active. This is not a "showstopper", but it could be confusing to some users.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Lenses is helping us more quickly iterate on our streaming-related projects. It provides a sophisticated, yet easy-to-use interface that helps our developers troubleshoot Kafka-related issues. Additionally, it has been invaluable in helping us design our partitioning strategies, as well as capacity plan. Furthermore, it provides us with the means to easily query billions of IoT messages to troubleshoot devices in the field.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
Download the Lenses Box and run it locally to see all the features in action.
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