In this chapter we covered downloading the Flume binary distribution. We created a simple configuration file that included one source writing to one channel feeding one sink. The source listened on a socket for network clients to connect and send it event data. Those events were written to an in-memory channel and then fed to a log4j sink to become output. We then connected to our listening agent using the Linux netcat utility and sent some String events into our Flume agent's source. Finally, we verified that our log4j based sink wrote the events out.
In the next chapter we'll take a detailed look at the two major channel types you'll likely use in your data processing workflows:
Memory channel
File channel
For each type we'll discuss all the configuration knobs available to you, when and why you might want to deviate from the defaults, and, most importantly, why to use one over the other.
