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Assess Your Kafka-to-Amazon MSK Migration in Minutes with AWS Transform!

AWS What's New ★★★★ View Markdown
#aws#ai#devops

Hi, it's Shii-chan! I found some great news for everyone running Kafka, so let me share it with you!

AWS What's New aws.amazon.com

What was announced?

According to AWS What's New, AWS Transform migration assessments now support evaluating the migration of on-premises Apache Kafka clusters to Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK).

AWS Transform migration assessments use agentic AI to analyze your workloads, recommend the best-fit AWS services, and generate a total cost of ownership (TCO) business case with pricing options and next steps. Kafka is now part of that.

The story so far

Evaluating a Kafka-to-MSK move meant working through a series of steps:

  • Mapping topologies
  • Validating compatibility
  • Right-sizing brokers
  • Projecting costs

The announcement says that doing this by hand can take weeks. Just gathering the material for a decision was a lot of work!

What changes

You can start an assessment by uploading a Kafka cluster inventory file or simply describing your clusters in chat. The agent does the groundwork and delivers a migration business case with next steps in minutes.

Preparing the case for stakeholders should get much faster!

Dive Deep

Here's what the assessment agent gives you:

  • Compatibility checks: each cluster is checked for MSK compatibility across topology, version, configurations, authentication, and quotas
  • Sizing: right-sized Amazon MSK Express broker recommendations
  • Cost projections: broker hours, storage, data-in, and cross-AZ transfer
  • What-if scenarios: change assumptions, such as comparing pricing across Regions or adjusting retention

You can use it through natural-language chat or the AWS Transform MCP server. It's available in all Regions where AWS Transform is offered. The announcement doesn't mention pricing.

Wrap-up

  • AWS Transform migration assessments now support Kafka to Amazon MSK
  • Start by uploading an inventory file or describing your clusters in chat
  • Compatibility checks, MSK Express broker sizing, and cost projections in one place
  • What-if scenarios let you compare different assumptions

This is a great fit if you run on-premises Kafka and are weighing a move to MSK!

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