Alternatively, you could've used async insert functionality built into ClickHouse: https://clickhouse.com/docs/optimize/asynchronous-inserts . All of these solutions are operationally simpler than Kafka + Vector, although obviously it's all tradeoffs.
But I imagine the writeup eschews myriad future concerns and does not entirely illustrate the pressure and stress of trying to solve such a high-scale problem.
Ultimately, going with a somewhat more complex solution that involves additional architecture but has been tried and tested by a 3rd party that you trust can sometimes be the more fitting end result. Assurance often weighs more than simplicity, I think.
rozenmd•1h ago
I had a similar project back in August when I realised my DB's performance (Postgres) was blocking me from implementing features users commonly ask for (querying out to 30 days of historical uptime data).
I was already blown away at the performance (200ms to query what Postgres was doing in 500-600ms), but then I realized I hadn't put an index on the Clickhouse table. Now the query returns in 50-70ms, and that includes network time.