An event-driven architecture consists of event producers that generate event streams and event consumers that listen for events. It allows for loose coupling between components and asynchronous event handling. Key aspects include publish/subscribe messaging patterns, event processing by middleware, and real-time or near real-time information flow. Benefits include scalability, loose coupling, fault tolerance, and the ability to add new consumers easily. Challenges include guaranteed delivery, processing events in order or exactly once across multiple consumer instances. Common tools used include Apache Kafka, Apache ActiveMQ, Redis, and Apache Pulsar.