Bufstream, a Kafka-compatible streaming system, faced safety and liveness issues including stuck consumers and producers, spurious zero offsets, and loss of acknowledged writes. These issues were addressed in version 0.1.3. The comparison of Kafka and Bufstream revealed concerns like lack of documentation on transaction semantics leading to potential write loss and read issues. Bufstream integrates with Buf Schema Registry for Protocol Buffer records validation and data governance, storing records in object storage like S3 for cost efficiency. Despite claims of being a drop-in replacement for Kafka with transaction compatibility, safety claims remain limited. Bufstream comprises subsystems for Kafka API provision, object storage, and coordination. Tester employed Jepsen testing library to assess Bufstream through various faults and scenarios, identifying issues like stuck consumers and data inconsistency.
https://jepsen.io/analyses/bufstream-0.1.0