Managing and monitoring Apache Pulsar clusters can be complex, especially for organizations with large-scale data pipelines. Pulsar Manager, open-sourced by the Apache Software Foundation, aims to simplify this task by providing a web-based tool that allows users to manage their Pulsar clusters without deep knowledge of Pulsar commands or APIs. In this article, we will cover an overview of Pulsar Manager, the core features it has, and the areas where it is lacking.
Pulsar Manager is a great fit for teams looking for an easy-to-use interface for managing and monitoring Pulsar clusters. It offers comprehensive tools for simplifying tenant, namespace, topic, and broker management, as well as for monitoring subscriptions. If you're operating a Pulsar cluster in a production environment or need to streamline operations without mastering Pulsar's API or command-line interface, Pulsar Manager is likely to reduce your operational burden.
However, while Pulsar Manager was the first tool available for managing Pulsar clusters, it has not seen significant development or maintenance in recent years and primarily offers only basic functionality. It lacks essential features such as live message viewing, schema management and producer monitoring, which are crucial for gaining insights into your pulsar architecture.
For organizations that require more advanced capabilities like topic and schema management, message viewing and producing, role-based access control (RBAC), or single sign-on (SSO), Pulsar Manager may fall short. If your use case demands these more sophisticated features, tools like Streamvisor could be a better fit. Streamvisor provides a comprehensive suite of advanced monitoring and management features that Pulsar Manager lacks, making it a strong alternative for specialized and modern Pulsar deployments.
Despite its limitations, Pulsar Manager provides powerful features for simplifying the management of Pulsar clusters. Below are the highlights of its core functionalities:
Pulsar Manager offers a graphical interface that provides essential insights into the cluster’s health, including throughput, storage size, and resource utilization. It makes identifying problems with brokers and bookies easier, reducing the time spent on maintenance and fault diagnosis.
Tenants, namespaces and topics are vital for organizing your messaging streams. Pulsar Manager simplifies their creation and management by allowing users to create and configure them directly from the interface. It also allows management of their respective policies.
Pulsar Manager offers tools for managing subscriptions, monitoring consumption, and latency. It also helps manage brokers, adjusting configurations, and monitoring broker health to maintain high cluster availability.
Pulsar Manager supports deployment using the official Apache Pulsar Helm chart , which simplifies running the application in Kubernetes environments.
While Pulsar Manager covers many important aspects of cluster management, it does have some limitations. Here are the key features it lacks:
Pulsar Manager doesn’t include built-in tools to manage topic schemas or producers, which can be crucial for applications requiring data governance through strict schema enforcement or detailed performance monitoring at the producer level.
You cannot live browse or filter messages directly from the Pulsar Manager interface, limiting your ability to debug or inspect data without external tools.
While Pulsar Manager supports a basic admin login, it does not provide a more robust RBAC system for multiple users, which is essential for organizations requiring different permissions or working with sensitive data.
Single Sign-On (SSO) integration with external identity providers for managing group access is not currently supported, which can be a dealbreaker for teams requiring streamlined user authentication and authorization.
There is no support for managing automated operations via service accounts, which is vital for teams looking to automate routine management tasks or integrate with their CI pipelines.
Pulsar Manager is a very useful tool for managing and monitoring Pulsar clusters without requiring in-depth knowledge of the underlying commands or APIs. However, if your use case requires advanced features such as message viewing and production, RBAC or SSO, Pulsar Manager may fall short. In those situations, alternatives like Streamvisor can offer the capabilities you need.
If you have other Pulsar Manager-related questions, you can contact us by filling out our contact form or joining our Slack Community.
If you want to learn how to install Pulsar Manager, check out our installation tutorial.
If you're encounter issues running Pulsar Manager, be sure to check our Pulsar Manager troubleshooting guide to resolve common problems.
