Get Kafka-Nated Ep 10: From MSK to Diskless Kafka w/ Kyle McCullough

Get Kafka-Nated Ep. 10
Wednesday, November 5th 2025

16:00 GMT

17:00 CET

11:00 EST

Guest Focus: Co-Founder & CTO at OpsHelm, former Head of Infrastructure Engineering at ProdPerfect and Lead Engineer at Vivid Seats

Kyle McCullough joins host Hugh Evans to explore what it takes to build real-time, multi-cloud streaming infrastructure at scale. As Co-Founder and CTO of OpsHelm, Kyle shares how his team processes hundreds of terabytes of cloud events daily, maintaining sub-second visibility while reducing streaming costs by 78% after migrating from MSK and NATS to Aiven Diskless Kafka.

We’ll dive into the lessons learned from three generations of streaming architecture, the realities of data loss and scaling challenges, and how Diskless Kafka enabled a 5× cost reduction, zero manual ops, and simplified multi-cloud deployment.

What we’ll cover:

• Why OpsHelm is described as “the git log for cloud infrastructure”
• Key lessons from migrating MSK → NATS → Diskless Kafka
• How Diskless Kafka delivers durability and scale without EBS or cross-AZ fees
• The trade-offs between latency, durability, and cost in real-time systems

If you’ve got topics you’d like us to explore, want to be a guest on the show, or have feedback on today’s episode, reach out. We’re always looking for new voices and perspectives from the Kafka community.