Getting started
The fastest way to get started and experiment with Snowbridge is to run it via the command line:
- Download the pre-compiled ZIP from the releases
- Unzip and run the binary with eg.
echo "hello world" | ./snowbridge
The defaults for the app are stdin source, no transformations, and stdout target - so this should print the message 'hello world' along with some logging data to the console.
Next, the app can be configured using HCL - simply create a configuration file, and provide the path to it using the SNOWBRIDGE_CONFIG_FILE environment variable.
You can find a guide to configuration in the configuration section.
Telemetry notice
By default, Snowplow collects telemetry data for Snowbridge (since version 1.0.0). Telemetry allows us to understand how our applications are used and helps us build a better product for our users (including you!).
This data is anonymous and minimal, and since our code is open source, you can inspect what’s collected.
If you wish to help us further, you can optionally provide your email (or just a UUID) in the user_provided_id configuration setting.
If you wish to disable telemetry, you can do so by setting disable_telemetry to true.
See our telemetry principles for more information.
Distribution options
There are two distributions of Snowbridge.
- Default
- AWS-specific (includes Kinesis source)
The default distribution contains everything except for the Kinesis source, i.e. the ability to read from AWS Kinesis. This distribution is all licensed under the Snowplow Limited Use License Agreement. (If you are uncertain how it applies to your use case, check our answers to frequently asked questions.)
It’s available on Docker:
docker pull snowplow/snowbridge:3.1.1
docker run snowplow/snowbridge:3.1.1
The AWS-specific distribution contains everything, including the Kinesis source, i.e. the ability to read from AWS Kinesis. Like the default distribution, it’s licensed under the Snowplow Limited Use License Agreement (frequently asked questions). However, this distribution has a dependency on twitchscience/kinsumer, which is licensed by Twitch under the Amazon Software License.
To comply with the Amazon Software License, you may only use this distribution of Snowbridge “with the web services, computing platforms or applications provided by Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates, including Amazon Web Services, Inc.”
It’s available on Docker:
docker pull snowplow/snowbridge:3.1.1-aws-only
docker run snowplow/snowbridge:3.1.1-aws-only
Deployment
The app can be deployed via services like EC2, ECS or Kubernetes using docker.
Configuration and authentication can be done by mounting the relevant files, and/or setting the relevant environment variables as per the standard authentication methods for cloud services.