Kai Wähner walks us through the tradeoffs of sending large messages in Apache Kafka:
After exploring use cases for large message payloads, let’s clarify what Kafka is not:
Kafka is usually not the right technology to store and process large files (images, videos, proprietary files, etc.) as a whole. Products were built specifically for these use cases.
For instance, a Content Delivery Network (CDN) such as Akamai, Limelight Networks, or Amazon CloudFront distribute video streams and other software downloads across the globe. Or “big file editing and processing” (like a video processing tool). Or video editing tools from Adobe, Autodesk, Camtasia, and many other vendors are used to structure and present all video information, including films and television shows, video advertisements, and video essays.
There’s a lot of good advice in here. I think the best advice is essentially “don’t do this unless you need it” but I appreciate that Kai goes a lot further than that.