i have been playing with kafka connect in standalone and distributed mode. i like standalone because: * i get to configure it using a file. this is easy for automated deployment (chef, puppet, etc.). configuration using a rest api i find inconvenient. * erors show up in log files instead of having to retrieve them using a rest api. same argument as previous bullet point really. i know how to automate log monitoring. rest api isnt great for this. * isolation of connector classes. every connector has its own jvm. no jar dependency hell.
i like distributed because: * well its fault tolerant and can distribute workload so this makes me wonder... how hard would it be to get the "connect-standalone" setup where each connector has its own service(s), configuration is done using files, and errors are written to logs, yet at the same time i can spin up multiple services for a connector and they form a group? and while we are at it also remove the rest api entirely, since i dont need it, it poses a security risk, and it makes it hard to spin up multiple connectors on same box. with such a setup i could simply deploy as many services as i need for a connector, using either chef, or perhaps slider on yarn, or whatever framework i need. this is related to KAFKA-3815 <https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/KAFKA-3815> which makes similar arguments for container deployments
