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Apr 17, 2026 · Industry Insights

Why LinkedIn Dumped Kafka for Its Own ‘Northguard’ Streaming Engine

LinkedIn, the original home of Apache Kafka, abandoned the platform for a home‑grown system called Northguard, redesigning log storage, decentralizing metadata, and adding a virtualized Xinfra layer to handle trillions of daily events, while still acknowledging Kafka’s relevance for most companies.

InfrastructureKafkaLinkedIn
0 likes · 7 min read
Why LinkedIn Dumped Kafka for Its Own ‘Northguard’ Streaming Engine
Wukong Talks Architecture
Wukong Talks Architecture
Aug 21, 2025 · Operations

Why LinkedIn Dropped Kafka for Northguard – A Deep Dive into Its Architecture

LinkedIn, the creator of Kafka, has largely abandoned Kafka in favor of a new log storage system called Northguard, whose design mirrors Apache Pulsar with features like storage‑compute separation, log striping, and a multi‑layer data model, offering superior scalability, operability, consistency, and durability for massive data streams.

Apache PulsarLinkedInNorthguard
0 likes · 22 min read
Why LinkedIn Dropped Kafka for Northguard – A Deep Dive into Its Architecture