Project Name
Automated & Monitored 50+ Apache NiFi Instances with DFM, Grafana & Thanos
A large North American enterprise was operating 50+ Apache NiFi instances across production, staging, and development environments with no centralised cluster management, no observability stack, and no formal support SLA. Every cluster setup was manual, LDAP integration was inconsistently applied, and platform failures surfaced through downstream data issues rather than proactive alerting. Ksolves deployed its proprietary DFM platform as the centralised control plane for the entire NiFi estate, integrated a Prometheus, Grafana, and Thanos monitoring stack for real-time and long-term observability, standardised LDAP authentication across all clusters, and established a formal L3 support SLA covering NiFi, Cassandra, DFS, and RabbitMQ integration incidents.
The client came to Ksolves with six operational problems that were turning routine cluster management into a source of ongoing production risk:
- Manual Cluster Operations Created Risk at Scale: With 50+ NiFi instances, every provisioning, upgrade, and configuration change was performed manually, introducing inconsistency, undocumented configuration drift, and making each change event a potential production incident.
- No Centralised NiFi Cluster Management: Cluster setup, flow deployment, and version upgrades relied on ad-hoc scripts, manual SSH access, and environment-specific procedures with no single control plane, leaving each cluster effectively ungoverned and unauditable.
- No Observability Across the NiFi Estate: No monitoring stack existed for the 50+ NiFi instances. Cluster health, flow throughput, and error rates were invisible to the operations team until they surfaced as downstream data quality failures, making proactive incident detection impossible.
- LDAP Authentication Applied Inconsistently Across Environments: Group-based authentication via OpenLDAP and Active Directory had been configured on some clusters but not others, creating security gaps and making access governance audits unreliable across the estate.
- No Formal Support SLA for Platform Incidents: Platform incidents involving NiFi, Cassandra, RabbitMQ, and DFS integrations were handled reactively with no defined response times, no escalation path, and no tracking mechanism, leaving the enterprise without a quantified risk model for critical data flow failures.
- Enterprise NiFi Scaling Required Capabilities Not Yet in Place: Operating NiFi at 50+ instance scale required NFS-based disaster recovery, NiFi Registry flow version control, cross-environment parameter context management, and automated patching, none of which were implemented or systematically documented.
Ksolves deployed its proprietary DFM platform as a centralized control plane for the NiFi estate, enabling automated, auditable cluster operations without manual intervention. Integrated with Prometheus, Grafana, and Thanos, the platform was supported through a dedicated L3 support SLA.
- DFM: Centralised NiFi Cluster Automation: DFM replaced all manual cluster operations with a single governed interface. It provides one-click provisioning on VM and Kubernetes, automated Dev to UAT to Production flow deployment, NiFi Registry integration for version control and rollback, and automated version upgrades with no manual SSH required.
- LDAP and SSO Integration via DFM: OpenLDAP and Active Directory authentication were built into DFM's cluster management workflow. Every cluster provisioned or upgraded through DFM receives a consistent LDAP configuration automatically. SSO via Azure AD and Keycloak was also configured, providing unified identity management across the entire platform.
- Prometheus and Grafana Observability Stack: Prometheus was set up to scrape real-time metrics from all 50+ NiFi instances, covering cluster health, flow throughput, JVM performance, and queue depth. Grafana dashboards give the operations team a single view across production and non-production environments, with alerts for threshold breaches and health degradation.
- Thanos Long-Term Metrics Retention: Thanos was added on top of Prometheus to provide high-availability metrics federation and long-term data retention. This enables capacity planning, historical trend analysis, and compliance archiving that go beyond what Prometheus alone can retain.
- Enterprise L3 Support with Formal SLA: A structured L3 support model was put in place with three defined tiers: Critical (30-minute response, 1-hour resolution), High (2-hour response), and Normal (24-hour response, 3-day resolution). Scope covers NiFi upgrades, NFS-based DR, LDAP issues, Cassandra and DFS integration, RabbitMQ 3.10 to 3.12 migration, and Registry flow management.
Technology Stack
| Category | Technology | Role in this engagement |
|---|---|---|
| Platform | DFM (Data Flow Manager) | Centralised control plane for one-click NiFi cluster provisioning, Dev to Production flow deployment, version upgrade automation, NFS-based DR, and enterprise SLA support. |
| Integration | Apache NiFi, NiFi Registry | Data flow platform managed at 50+ instance scale across production, staging, and development, with Registry providing version control and rollback for all deployed flows. |
| Monitoring | Prometheus, Grafana | Prometheus scrapes cluster health, flow throughput, JVM, and queue metrics from all instances; Grafana provides a single-pane operations dashboard with threshold alerting across all environments. |
| Long-Term Storage | Thanos | Adds high-availability federation and long-term metric retention to Prometheus, enabling capacity planning, trend analysis, and compliance-grade archiving across the full NiFi estate. |
| Security | LDAP, OpenLDAP, Active Directory, SSO | Consistent LDAP configuration is applied automatically at every cluster provisioning and upgrade via DFM; SSO via Azure AD and Keycloak for unified identity management across the platform. |
| Messaging | RabbitMQ, Apache Cassandra | RabbitMQ upgraded from 3.10 to 3.12 with Federation and Shovel setup to stabilise NiFi messaging dependencies; Cassandra integration issues diagnosed and resolved under the L3 support scope. |
Following deployment, five outcomes transformed how the enterprise operates and governs its NiFi estate:
- 50+ NiFi Instances Centralised Under a Single Control Plane: DFM replaced ad-hoc scripts and manual SSH operations with a governed, auditable interface for all cluster lifecycle events across every environment. (target: validate operational hours saved per month)
- Full Observability Across All Environments: Real-Time and Historical: Prometheus, Grafana, and Thanos now surface cluster health, flow throughput, and error rates across all 50+ instances, enabling proactive incident detection before downstream data quality issues occur. (target)
- LDAP Authentication Standardised Across Every Cluster: DFM applies consistent, documented LDAP configuration automatically at cluster provisioning and upgrade, making access governance auditable and reproducible across the full estate. (target)
- Enterprise SLA Support Framework Established: Formal L3 SLA tiers govern all platform incident response, with Critical incidents receiving a 30-minute response and 1-hour resolution target, covering 10 to 15 enterprise-tier tickets per year.
- RabbitMQ Upgraded and Messaging Topology Stabilised: Upgrade from RabbitMQ 3.10 to 3.12 with complete Federation and Shovel setup resolved message routing gaps that had required manual intervention in the NiFi flows dependent on the messaging layer.
“Managing 50+ NiFi instances manually was becoming impossible. DFM gave us a control plane we could actually operate at enterprise scale, and the monitoring stack finally made the platform visible to our operations team.”
–VP of Engineering / North American Enterprise
Before this engagement, the enterprise operated 50+ Apache NiFi instances with no centralised management, no observability, inconsistent LDAP integration, and no formal support SLA. Today, Ksolves has delivered DFM as the single control plane for all NiFi cluster lifecycle operations, backed by a Prometheus, Grafana, and Thanos monitoring stack and formal L3 SLA tiers covering critical to normal priority incidents. Every cluster provisioned through DFM receives a consistent LDAP configuration automatically. Thanos provides long-term metric retention for capacity planning and compliance, and RabbitMQ 3.12 with Federation and Shovel has stabilised the messaging layer that the NiFi flows depend on.
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