Realtime Compute for Apache Flink offers three service types: fully managed Flink, semi-managed Flink/EMR, and Blink dedicated cluster (legacy). Use this page to understand the differences and choose the right option before purchasing.
Form differences
| Product | Deployment mode | Compute engine | Development platform |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fully managed Flink | Kubernetes container-based deployment | Ververica Runtime (VVR) | Enterprise-level development and O&M platform |
| Semi-managed Flink/EMR | YARN-based deployment | VVR |
Custom |
| Blink dedicated cluster (legacy) | YARN-based deployment | Blink | Bayes |
Semi-managed Flink/EMR refers to a Dataflow cluster on Alibaba Cloud E-MapReduce (EMR). For details, see Overview of Flink.
Release status
For details on each phase, see Lifecycle Policy.
| Product | Release status | EOM1 | EOM2 | EOFS | EOS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fully managed Flink | GA | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Semi-managed Flink/EMR | GA | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Blink dedicated cluster (legacy) | EOM2 | April 28, 2021 | November 15, 2022 | March 30, 2023 | July 30, 2023 |
Choose a service type
Fully managed Flink
Choose fully managed Flink if your team wants to focus on building streaming applications without managing cluster infrastructure.
Semi-managed Flink/EMR
Choose semi-managed Flink/EMR if your team needs full control over cluster resources and is already familiar with YARN or Alibaba Cloud E-MapReduce.
Blink dedicated cluster (legacy)
As of April 28, 2021, new Blink dedicated cluster purchases are no longer available. The product entered EOM1 on that date. Existing clusters support scale-out or scale-in operations only. For new deployments, use fully managed Flink.
For more information, see Service notices for Realtime Compute (Blink) (new purchases discontinued).