The document presents an overview of dataflow management using Apache NiFi, highlighting its capabilities and associated challenges. It explains the importance of Apache NiFi and its subproject Minifi in managing data pipelines effectively, addressing issues such as data provenance, security, and integration. Additionally, it covers the NiFi Registry for flow versioning and introduces complementary tools to enhance the NiFi ecosystem.

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Dataflow Management From Edge to
Core with Apache NiFi
Andy LoPresto | @yolopey
Sr. Member of Technical Staff at Hortonworks, Apache NiFi PMC & Committer
06 February 2019 Dataworks Summit Melbourne

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Acknowledgement of Country
I acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which we
are meeting. I pay my respects to their Elders, past and
present, and the Aboriginal Elders of other communities who
may be here today.

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Gauging Audience Familiarity With NiFi
“What’s a NeeFee?”
No experience with dataflow
No experience with NiFi
“I can pick this up pretty quickly”
Some experience with dataflow
Some experience with NiFi
“I refactored the Ambari
integration endpoint to allow
for mutual authentication
TLS during my coffee break”
Forgotten more about NiFi
than most of us will ever
know

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Agenda
• What is dataflow and what are the challenges?
• Apache NiFi
• Apache MiNiFi
• Apache NiFi Registry
• Complementary Tools
• Community
• All slides provided online, so no need to transcribe

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What is dataflow?

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What is dataflow?
• Moving some content from A to B
• Content could be any bytes
• Logs
• HTTP
• XML
• CSV
• Images
• Video
• Telemetry
Producers A.K.A
Things
Anything
AND
Everything
Internet!
Consumers
• User
• Storage
• System
• …More Things

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Moving data effectively is hard
“Data Pipeline” https://xkcd.com/2054/

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• Standards
• Formats
• Protocols
• Veracity
• Validity
• Schemas
• Partitioning/
Bundling
Data
Dataflow Challenges In 3 Categories
Infrastructure
• “Exactly Once”
Delivery
• Ensuring
Security
• Overcoming
Security
• Credential
Management
• Network
People
• Compliance
• “That [person|
team|group]”
• Consumers
Change
• Requirements
Change
• “Exactly Once”
Delivery

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Raise your hand if you want to maintain Python scripts for the rest of your life
Let’s Connect Lots of As to Bs to As to Cs to Bs to Δs to Cs to ϕs

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Apache NiFi

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• Guaranteed delivery
• Data buffering
• Backpressure
• Pressure release
• Prioritized queuing
• Flow specific QoS
• Latency vs. throughput
• Loss tolerance
Key Features
Apache NiFi
• Data provenance
• Supports push and pull models
• Recovery/recording
a rolling log of fine-grained history
• Visual command and control
• Flow templates
• Pluggable, multi-tenant security
• Designed for extension
• Clustering

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Flowfiles Are Like HTTP Data
HTTP Data FlowFile
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 2010 23:26:07 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.8 (CentOS) OpenSSL/0.9.8g
Last-Modified: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 22:04:35 GMT
ETag: "45b6-834-49130cc1182c0"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 13
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html
Hello world!
Standard FlowFile Attributes
Key: 'entryDate’ Value: 'Fri Jun 17 17:15:04 EDT 2016'
Key: 'lineageStartDate’ Value: 'Fri Jun 17 17:15:04 EDT 2016'
Key: 'fileSize’ Value: '23609'
FlowFile Attribute Map Content
Key: 'filename’ Value: '15650246997242'
Key: 'path’ Value: './’
Binary Content *
Header
Content

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User Interface
Less of this…

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User Interface
Less of this…… more of this

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Deeper Ecosystem Integration: 286+ Processors, 61 Controller
Services
Hash
Extract
Merge
Duplicate
Scan
GeoEnrich
Replace
ConvertSplit
Translate
Route Content
Route Context
Route Text
Control Rate
Distribute Load
Generate Table Fetch
Jolt Transform JSON
Prioritized Delivery
Encrypt
Tail
Evaluate
Execute
All Apache project logos are trademarks of the ASF and the respective projects.
Fetch
HTTP
Syslog
Email
HTML
Image
HL7
FTP
UDP
XML
SFTP
AMQP
WebSocket
Parse Records Convert Records

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Apache MiNiFi

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IoT Challenges
• Limited computing capability
• Limited power/network
• Restricted software library/platform
availability
• No UI
• Physically inaccessible
• Not frequently updated
• Competing standards/protocols
• Scalability
• Privacy & Security
@_lennart

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• NiFi is designed to “own the box”
• NiFi 0.7.x started up in about 10-15 minutes on RP3 (593 MB)
• NiFi 1.x started up in about 30 minutes on RP3 (760 MB)
• 33 new processors
• Rewrite for multi tenant authorization
• Complete UI overhaul
So Why Do We Need A Different Solution?

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• Get the key parts of NiFi close to where data begins and provide bidirectional
communication
• NiFi lives in the data center — give it an enterprise server or a cluster of them
• MiNiFi lives as close to where data is born and is a guest on that device or system
• IoT
• Connected car
• Legacy hardware
Apache NiFi Subproject: MiNiFi

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• MiNiFi Java (v0.5.0)
• Modified version of NiFi
• No UI
• YAML configuration
• Reduced processor count
• 63+ by default, more
available with
additional NARs
• MiNiFi C++ (v0.5.0)
• Written from scratch
• 33 processors by default
• Bi-directional site-to-site & provenance data
Flavors of MiNiFi

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• NiFi
• Design flows
• Aggregate data from many
sources
• Perform routing/analysis/SEP
• MiNiFi
• Receive flows
• Collect data
• Send for processing
How Does MiNiFi Interact With NiFi?

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• We’ve been imagining EDGE to CORE as a bi-directional linear system
• Let’s expand
that to the real
world
Let’s Add Dimensionality

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• Data tagging/provenance
• Governance from edge (geopolitical
restrictions)
• Security (encryption, certificate-based
authentication)
• Low latency (immediate reactions &
decision-making)
What does MiNiFi provide? Connected Car Reference Platform Box
Tuner + DSRC CardConnectivity Card

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• Site-to-Site
• NiFi protocol
• Two implementations
• Raw socket
• HTTP(S)
• Secured with mutual authentication TLS
• HTTP(S), (S)FTP, JMS, Syslog, File, Email, Process
MiNiFi Exfil

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Apache NiFi Registry

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Flow Development Lifecycle (FDLC)
• Origins of NiFi
• Operator Experience
• MC data, don’t drop, mitigate
temporarily
• Version Control
• Environment Promotion

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Operator Experience

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Operator Experience

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Operator Experience

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• Shows previous values (user,
time changed)
• Sensitive values are always
encrypted at rest and never
returned via the API
Component Property History

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Exporting Flows
• XML templates
• Copying flow.xml.gz
between systems

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Challenges
• Templates
• Updates/replacement
• Sensitive property replacement
• Flow.xml.gz migration
• Key synchronization
• Environment promotion
• Approval processes
• Verifiability

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Template Replacement
• Export a new version of template
• Transfer (somehow)
• Verify?
• Import onto canvas side-by-side existing
flow
• Stop processors
• Empty queues
• Reconnect queues
• Start
• Pray?

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Template Replacement

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• Previously, flows were exported via
XML templates
• Didn’t contain sensitive values
• Couldn’t be updated in-place
• No tracking system
• NiFi Registry brings asset management
as first-class citizen to NiFi
• Flows can be versioned
Introducing Apache NiFi Registry 0.3.0
NiFi Registry for Dataflows

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• Connect multiple NiFi instances
to a NiFi Registry instance
• Communicate between
multiple NiFi Registry instances
• via multiple Registry Clients
• via NiFi CLI
Flows can be promoted between environments

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• Git-backed persistence
• Share flows via GitHub, etc.
• Commit hooks
• Register a hook & action
• “When a new version of the
flow is committed to QA
Registry, email the QA team
and post in the QA Deploy
Slack channel”
• Pluggable DB implementations
Extensibility

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Demo

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• Install nifi-registry
• $ mvn clean install
• $ ./bin/nifi-registry.sh
start
• Browse to http://localhost:18080
Create Registry

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Create Bucket

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Connect to NiFi

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Connect to NiFi

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Create Process Group

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Create Process Group

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Commit Version

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Commit Version

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Commit Version

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View flow in Registry

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Import new instance into NiFi

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Import new instance into NiFi

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Import new instance into NiFi

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Modify the original flow

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Modify the original flow

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Modify the original flow

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See local changes before committing

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See local changes before committing

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See local changes before committing

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Commit

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Commit

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Update new instance from Registry

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Update new instance from Registry

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Update new instance from Registry

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Complementary Tools

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• NiFi Toolkit
• NiPyAPI
• MiNiFi Converter Toolkit
Complementary Tools

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NiFi Toolkit
• TLS Toolkit
• Generates, signs, and packages
keys and certificates for NiFi
services (node/cluster, clients)
• Encrypt Config
• Protects sensitive
configuration values like
passwords
• CLI
• Interacts with NiFi & NiFi
Registry to operate on flows

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NiPyAPI
• Python wrapper around NiFi REST API
• Community-provided by Daniel Chaffelson
• Exposes common operations for automation, batch processing, recursion, etc.
dev_bucket = nipyapi.versioning.get_registry_bucket(dev_bucket_name)
dev_ver_flow = nipyapi.versioning.get_flow_in_bucket(
dev_bucket.identifier,
identifier=dev_ver_flow_name
)
dev_export = nipyapi.versioning.export_flow_version(
bucket_id=dev_bucket.identifier,
flow_id=dev_ver_flow.identifier,
mode='yaml'
)

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MiNiFi Converter Toolkit
• Save as template from NiFi
• Run $ ./bin/config.sh transform
template.xml config.yml
• MiNiFi flow ready to run

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Community

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• FDLC with Apache NiFi, Kevin
Doran
• NiPyAPI Docs, Daniel
Chaffelson
• DevOps Tips, Tim Spann
• Automate Workflow, Pierre
Villard
More Resources

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• NiFi 1.8.0 — 26 Oct 2018 (212+ Jiras)
• Jetty, DB improvements
• Auto load-balancing queues
• TLS Toolkit w/ external CA
• Record processor improvements
• MiNiFi C++ 0.5.0 — 6 June 2018
• MiNiFi Java 0.5.0 — 7 July 2018
• NiFi Registry 0.3.0 — 25 Sept 2018
New Announcements

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Community Health

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Apache NiFi site
https://nifi.apache.org
Subproject MiNiFi site
https://nifi.apache.org/minifi/
Subscribe to and collaborate at
dev@nifi.apache.org
users@nifi.apache.org
Submit Ideas or Issues
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/NIFI
Follow us on Twitter
@apachenifi
Learn more and join us

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More NiFi Today
Title Time Room
The First Mile – Edge and IoT Data Collection with Apache NiFi and
MiNiFi
1100 - 1140 Room 103
Apache NiFi Crash Course 1400 - 1600 Room 109
Dataflow Management From Edge to Core with Apache NiFi 1650 - 1730 Room 112
Using Spark Streaming and NiFi for the Next Generation of ETL in
the Enterprise
1650 - 1730 Room 103

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Thank you
alopresto@hortonworks.com | alopresto@apache.org | @yolopey
github.com/alopresto/slides