Apache Storm

Apache Storm is a distributed real-time computation system designed for processing unbounded streams of data with low latency. Originally developed at BackType (later acquired by Twitter), Storm has become a critical component in the big data ecosystem. At its core, Storm functions through a topology - a directed graph where vertices represent computation components and edges indicate data flow. The primary abstraction in Storm consists of two key components: Spouts and Bolts. Spouts serve as data sources, ingesting data from external systems like Kafka or RabbitMQ and emitting them as tuples (ordered lists of values). Bolts process these tuples, performing operations such as filtering, aggregating, joining, or interacting with databases. Storm processes data through streams - unbounded sequences of tuples. Its processing model guarantees that each tuple will be fully processed, offering at-least-once or exactly-once processing semantics. This reliability makes Storm suitable for critical applications where data loss is unacceptable. One of Storm's defining characteristics is its low latency processing capability, often achieving sub-second response times. This makes it particularly valuable for use cases requiring immediate insights, such as fraud detection, system monitoring, or real-time analytics. Storm's architecture includes a master node (Nimbus) that distributes code across worker nodes and monitors for failures. Worker nodes run supervisor daemons that start and stop worker processes as directed by Nimbus. ZooKeeper coordinates between Nimbus and Supervisors, storing cluster state. As part of the Hadoop ecosystem, Storm integrates well with HDFS, HBase, and other big data technologies. It scales horizontally by adding more machines to the cluster and offers high fault tolerance by automatically reassigning tasks from failed nodes. For Big Data Engineers, Storm provides a robust solution for stream processing applications requiring high throughput, strong reliability guarantees, and millisecond-level processing times.

Apache Storm is a distributed real-time computation system designed for processing unbounded streams of data with low latency. Originally developed at BackType (later acquired by Twitter), Storm has …