Design Considerations for Cloud-Native Data Systems

This post introduces the concept of cloud-native data systems and outlines key capabilities expected by users: Elasticity, Infinite scale, Resiliency, Multi-tenancy, Pay per use, Cost-effectiveness, and Global reach. It then details Confluent Cloud's approach to achieving these capabilities, specifically focusing on Elasticity through its control plane and Self Balancing Clusters (SBC) with tiered storage, and Performance/Scalability by understanding user workloads and optimizing the stack. It also elaborates on Multi-tenancy by discussing access, namespace, and performance isolation, and introduces the Storage Durability Audit as a high-level capability.