Real-time vector embedding blueprints - FAQ - Managed Service for Apache Flink
What Amazon resources does this blueprint create? What are my actions after the Amazon CloudFormation stack deployment is complete? What should be the structure of the data in the source Amazon MSK topic(s)? Can I specify parts of a message to embed? Can I read data from multiple Amazon MSK topics? Can I use regex to configure Amazon MSK topic names? What is the maximum size of a message that can be read from an Amazon MSK topic? What type of OpenSearch is supported? Why do I need to use a vector search collection, vector index, and add a vector field in my OpenSearch Serverless colelction? What should I set as the dimension for my vector field? What does the output look like in the configured OpenSearch index? Can I specify metadata fields to add to the document stored in the OpenSearch index? Should I expect duplicate entries in the OpenSearch index? Can I send data to multiple OpenSearch indices? Can I deploy multiple real-time vector embedding applications in a single Amazon Web Services account? Can multiple real-time vector embedding applications use the same data source or sink? Does the application support cross-account connectivity? Does the application support cross-Region connectivity? Can my Amazon MSK cluster and OpenSearch collection be in different VPCs or subnets?What embedding models are supported by the application?Can I fine-tune the performance of my application based on my workload?What Amazon MSK authentication types are supported?What is sink.os.bulkFlushIntervalMillis and how do I set it? When I deploy my Managed Service for Apache Flink application, from what point in the Amazon MSK topic will it begin reading messages? How do I use source.msk.starting.offset?What chunking strategies are supported? How do I read records in my vector datastore?Where can I find new updates to the source code? Can I make a change to the Amazon CloudFormation template and update the Managed Service for Apache Flink application? Will Amazon monitor and maintain the application on my behalf? Does this application move my data outside my Amazon Web Services account?
Services or capabilities described in Amazon Web Services documentation might vary by Region. To see the differences applicable to the China Regions, see Getting Started with Amazon Web Services in China (PDF).

Amazon Managed Service for Apache Flink was previously known as Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics for Apache Flink.

Real-time vector embedding blueprints - FAQ

Review the following FAQ about real-time vector embedding blueprints. For more information about real-time vector embedding blueprints, see Real-time vector embedding blueprints.

FAQ

What Amazon resources does this blueprint create?

To find resources deployed in your account, navigate to Amazon CloudFormation console and identify the stack name that starts with the name you provided for your Managed Service for Apache Flink application. Choose the Resources tab to check the resources that were created as part of the stack. The following are the key resources that the stack creates:

  • Real-time vector embedding Managed Service for Apache Flink application

  • Amazon S3 bucket for holding the source code for the real-time vector embedding application

  • CloudWatch log group and log stream for storing logs

  • Lambda functions for fetching and creating resources

  • IAM roles and policies for Lambdas, Managed Service for Apache Flink application, and accessing Amazon Bedrock and Amazon OpenSearch Service

  • Data access policy for Amazon OpenSearch Service

  • VPC endpoints for accessing Amazon Bedrock and Amazon OpenSearch Service

What are my actions after the Amazon CloudFormation stack deployment is complete?

After the Amazon CloudFormation stack deployment is complete, access the Managed Service for Apache Flink console and find your blueprint Managed Service for Apache Flink application. Choose the Configure tab and confirm that all runtime properties are setup correctly. They may overflow to the next page. When you are confident of the settings, choose Run. The application will start ingesting messages from your topic.

To check for new releases, see https://github.com/awslabs/real-time-vectorization-of-streaming-data/releases.

What should be the structure of the data in the source Amazon MSK topic(s)?

We currently support structured and unstructured source data.

  • Unstructured data is denoted by STRING in source.msk.data.type. The data is read as is from the incoming message.

  • We currently support structured JSON data, denoted by JSON in source.msk.data.type. The data must always be in JSON format. If the application receives a malformed JSON, the application will fail.

  • When using JSON as source data type, make sure that every message in all source topics is a valid JSON. If you subscribe to one or more topics that do not contain JSON objects with this setting, the application will fail. If one or more topics have a mix of structured and unstructured data, we recommended that you configure source data as unstructured in the Managed Service for Apache Flink application.

Can I specify parts of a message to embed?

  • For unstructured input data where source.msk.data.type is STRING, the application will always embed the entire message and store the entire message in the configured OpenSearch index.

  • For structured input data where source.msk.data.type is JSON, you can configure embed.input.config.json.fieldsToEmbed to specify which field in the JSON object should be selected for embedding. This only works for top-level JSON fields and does not work with nested JSONs and with messages containing a JSON array. Use .* to embed the entire JSON.

Can I read data from multiple Amazon MSK topics?

Yes, you can read data from multiple Amazon MSK topics with this application. Data from all topics must be of the same type (either STRING or JSON) or it might cause the application to fail. Data from all topics is always stored in a single OpenSearch index.

Can I use regex to configure Amazon MSK topic names?

source.msk.topic.names does not support a list of regex. We support either a comma separated list of topic names or .* regex to include all topics.

What is the maximum size of a message that can be read from an Amazon MSK topic?

The maximum size of a message that can be processed is limited by the Amazon Bedrock InvokeModel body limit that is currently set to 25,000,000. For more information, see InvokeModel.

What type of OpenSearch is supported?

We support both OpenSearch domains and collections. If you are using an OpenSearch collection, make sure to use a vector collection and create a vector index to use for this application. This will let you use the OpenSearch vector database capabilities for querying your data. To learn more, seeAmazon OpenSearch Service’s vector database capabilities explained.

Why do I need to use a vector search collection, vector index, and add a vector field in my OpenSearch Serverless colelction?

The vector search collection type in OpenSearch Serverless provides a similarity search capability that is scalable and high performing. It streamlines building modern machine learning (ML) augmented search experiences and generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications. For more information, see Working with vector search collections.

What should I set as the dimension for my vector field?

Set the dimension of the vector field based on the embedding model that you want to use. Refer to the following table, and confirm these values from the respective documentation.

Vector field dimensions
Amazon Bedrock vector embedding model name Output dimension support offered by the model

Amazon Titan Text Embeddings V1

 1,536

Amazon Titan Text Embeddings V2

 1,024 (default), 384, 256

Amazon Titan Multimodal Embeddings G1

 1,024 (default), 384, 256

Cohere Embed English

 1,024

Cohere Embed Multilingual

 1,024

What does the output look like in the configured OpenSearch index?

Every document in the OpenSearch index contains following fields:

  • original_data: The data that was used to generate embeddings. For STRING type, it is the entire message. For JSON object, it is the JSON object that was used for embeddings. It could be the entire JSON in the message or specified fields in the JSON. For example, if name was selected to be embedded from incoming messages, the output would look as follows:

    "original_data": "{\"name\":\"John Doe\"}"

  • embedded_data: A vector float array of embeddings generated by Amazon Bedrock

  • date: UTC timestamp at which the document was stored in OpenSearch

Can I specify metadata fields to add to the document stored in the OpenSearch index?

No, currently, we do not support adding additional fields to the final document stored in the OpenSearch index.

Should I expect duplicate entries in the OpenSearch index?

Depending on how you configured your application, you might see duplicate messages in the index. One common reason is application restart. The application is configured by default to start reading from the earliest message in the source topic. When you change the configuraiton, the application restarts, and processes all messages in the topic again. To avoid re-processing, see How do I use source.msk.starting.offset? and correctly set the starting offset for your application.

Can I send data to multiple OpenSearch indices?

No, the application supports storing data to a single OpenSearch index. To setup vectorization output to multiple indices, you must deploy separate Managed Service for Apache Flink applications.

Can I deploy multiple real-time vector embedding applications in a single Amazon Web Services account?

Yes, you can deploy multiple real-time vector embedding Managed Service for Apache Flink applications in a single Amazon Web Services account if every application has a unique name.

Can multiple real-time vector embedding applications use the same data source or sink?

Yes, you can create multiple real-time vector embedding Managed Service for Apache Flink applications that read data from the same topic(s) or store data in the same index.

Does the application support cross-account connectivity?

No, for the application to run successfully, the Amazon MSK cluster and the OpenSearch collection must be in the same Amazon Web Services account where you are trying to setup your Managed Service for Apache Flink application.

Does the application support cross-Region connectivity?

No, the application only allows you to deploy an Managed Service for Apache Flink application with an Amazon MSK cluster and an OpenSearch collection in the same Region of the Managed Service for Apache Flink application.

Can my Amazon MSK cluster and OpenSearch collection be in different VPCs or subnets?

Yes, we support Amazon MSK cluster and OpenSearch collection in different VPCs and subnets as long as they are in the same Amazon Web Services account. See (General MSF troubleshooting) to make sure your setup is correct.

What embedding models are supported by the application?

Currently, the application supports all models that are supported by Bedrock. These include:

  • Amazon Titan Embeddings G1 - Text

  • Amazon Titan Text Embeddings V2

  • Amazon Titan Multimodal Embeddings G1

  • Cohere Embed English

  • Cohere Embed Multilingual

Can I fine-tune the performance of my application based on my workload?

Yes. The throughput of the application depends on a number of factors, all of which can be controlled by the customers:

  1. Amazon MSF KPUs: The application is deployed with default parallelism factor 2 and parallelism per KPU 1, with automatic scaling turned on. However, we recommend that you configure scaling for the Managed Service for Apache Flink application according to your workloads. For more information, see Review Managed Service for Apache Flink application resources.

  2. Amazon Bedrock: Based on the selected Amazon Bedrock on-demand model, different quotas might apply. Review service quotas in Bedrock to see the workload that the service will be able to handle. For more information, see Quotas for Amazon Bedrock.

  3. Amazon OpenSearch Service: Additionally, in some situations, you might notice that OpenSearch is the bottleneck in your pipeline. For scaling information, see OpenSearch scaling Sizing Amazon OpenSearch Service domains.

What Amazon MSK authentication types are supported?

We only support the IAM MSK authentication type.

What is sink.os.bulkFlushIntervalMillis and how do I set it?

When sending data to Amazon OpenSearch Service, the bulk flush interval is the interval at which the bulk request is run, regardless of the number of actions or the size of the request. The default value is set to 1 millisecond.

While setting a flush interval can help to make sure that data is indexed timely, it can also lead to increased overhead if set too low. Consider your use case and the importance of timely indexing when choosing a flush interval.

When I deploy my Managed Service for Apache Flink application, from what point in the Amazon MSK topic will it begin reading messages?

The application will start reading messages from the Amazon MSK topic at the offset specified by the source.msk.starting.offset configuration set in the application’s runtime configuration. If source.msk.starting.offset is not explicitly set, the default behavior of the application is to start reading from the earliest available message in the topic.

How do I use source.msk.starting.offset?

Explicitly set source.msk.starting.offset to one of the following values, based on desired behavior:

  • EARLIEST: The default setting, which reads from oldest offset in the partition. This is a good choice especially if:

    • You have newly created Amazon MSK topics and consumer applications.

    • You need to replay data, so you can build or reconstruct state. This is relevant when implementing the event sourcing pattern or when initializing a new service that requires a complete view of the data history.

  • LATEST: The Managed Service for Apache Flink application will read messages from the end of the partition. We recommend this option if you only care about new messages being produced and don't need to process historical data. In this setting, the consumer will ignore the existing messages and only read new messages published by the upstream producer.

  • COMMITTED: The Managed Service for Apache Flink application will start consuming messages from the committed offset of the consuming group. If the committed offset doesn't exist, the EARLIEST reset strategy will be used.

What chunking strategies are supported?

We are using the langchain library to chunk inputs. Chunking is only applied if the length of the input is greater than the chosen maxSegmentSizeInChars. We support the following five chunking types:

  • SPLIT_BY_CHARACTER: Will fit as many characters as it can into each chunk where each chunk length is no greater than maxSegmentSizeInChars. Doesn’t care about whitespace, so it can cut off words.

  • SPLIT_BY_WORD: Will find whitespace characters to chunk by. No words are cut off.

  • SPLIT_BY_SENTENCE: Sentence boundaries are detected using the Apache OpenNLP library with the English sentence model.

  • SPLIT_BY_LINE: Will find new line characters to chunk by.

  • SPLIT_BY_PARAGRAPH: Will find consecutive new line characters to chunk by.

The splitting strategies fall back according to the preceding order, where the larger chunking strategies like SPLIT_BY_PARAGRAPH fall back to SPLIT_BY_CHARACTER. For example, when using SPLIT_BY_LINE, if a line is too long then the line will be sub-chunked by sentence, where each chunk will fit in as many sentences as it can. If there are any sentences that are too long, then it will be chunked at the word-level. If a word is too long, then it will be split by character.

How do I read records in my vector datastore?

  1. When source.msk.data.type is STRING

    • original_data: The entire original string from the Amazon MSK message.

    • embedded_data: Embedding vector created from chunk_data if it is not empty (chunking applied) or created from original_data if no chunking was applied.

    • chunk_data: Only present when the original data was chunked. Contains the chunk of the original message that was used to create the embedding in embedded_data.

  2. When source.msk.data.type is JSON

    • original_data: The entire original JSON from the Amazon MSK message after JSON key filtering is applied.

    • embedded_data: Embedding vector created from chunk_data if it is not empty (chunking applied) or created from original_data if no chunking was applied.

    • chunk_key: Only present when the original data was chunked. Contains the JSON key that the chunk is from in original_data. For example, it can look like jsonKey1.nestedJsonKeyA for nested keys or metadata in the example of original_data.

    • chunk_data: Only present when the original data was chunked. Contains the chunk of the original message that was used to create the embedding in embedded_data.

Yes, you can read data from multiple Amazon MSK topics with this application. Data from all topics must be of the same type (either STRING or JSON) or it might cause the application to fail. Data from all topics is always stored in a single OpenSearch index.

Where can I find new updates to the source code?

Go to https://github.com/awslabs/real-time-vectorization-of-streaming-data/releases to check for new releases.

Can I make a change to the Amazon CloudFormation template and update the Managed Service for Apache Flink application?

No, making a change to the Amazon CloudFormation template does not update the Managed Service for Apache Flink application. Any new change in Amazon CloudFormation implies a new stack needs to be deployed.

Will Amazon monitor and maintain the application on my behalf?

No, Amazon will not monitor, scale, update or patch this application on your behalf.

Does this application move my data outside my Amazon Web Services account?

All data read and stored by the Managed Service for Apache Flink application stays within your Amazon Web Services account and never leaves your account.