Orchestrate & Recover Real-Time Data Pipelines
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Orchestrate & Recover Real-Time Data Pipelines
This course is part of Real-Time, Real Fast: Kafka & Spark for Data Engineers Specialization
Instructors: Starweaver
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What you'll learn
Build and schedule streaming and batch-adjacent workflows using a modern orchestrator, such as Airflow or Prefect.
IImplement reliability patterns like idempotence, checkpointing, DLQs, and backfills for fault-tolerant and exactly-once-ish processing.
Design multi-region recovery strategies (mirroring/replication) and run playbooks to restore pipelines after partial or regional failures.
Skills you'll gain
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January 2026
1 assignment
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There are 3 modules in this course
Building a data pipeline is easy. Building one that automatically recovers from failures, maintains data integrity during outages, and runs reliably in productionβthat's what separates junior engineers from platform architects.
This course teaches you to design self-healing pipelines with automated recovery, fault tolerance, and disaster recovery built in from day one. You'll learn to build and schedule streaming workflows using modern orchestrators like Airflow and Prefect, implement reliability patterns including idempotence, checkpointing, and dead-letter queues for exactly-once-ish processing, and design multi-region recovery strategies that keep data flowing during regional failures. Through hands-on labs and real-world examples from Airbnb, LinkedIn, Netflix, and Uber, you'll master the orchestration and recovery techniques that turn fragile scripts into production-grade infrastructure. Learn to handle automated retries, run safe backfills, implement checkpoint-based recovery, and execute disaster recovery playbooks that restore pipelines after outages. Engineers who build or maintain real-time data pipelines and need stronger orchestration, reliability, and recovery skills. Basics of Python & SQL, Linux CLI, and Kafka fundamentals. Cloud account helpful but optional. By the end of the course, learners will be able to design, orchestrate, and recover real-time data pipelines that run reliably at production scale.
Learners set up a modern orchestrator and build a first DAG/flow that runs reliably. We cover scheduling, retries, task dependencies, and lightweight observability. By the end, learners will ship a minimal but production-aware pipeline.
What's included
4 videos2 readings1 peer review
4 videosβ’Total 31 minutes
- Why Orchestration Matters: From Cron to DAGsβ’3 minutes
- Build Your First DAG (Airflow)β’9 minutes
- Flows the Pythonic Way (Prefect)β’9 minutes
- Demo: Scheduling, Retries, and Alerting End-to-Endβ’10 minutes
2 readingsβ’Total 10 minutes
- Welcome to the Course: Course Overviewβ’5 minutes
- Choosing an Orchestrator: Airflow vs. Prefectβ’5 minutes
1 peer reviewβ’Total 20 minutes
- Hands-On-Learning: Ship a Minimal Reliable DAG/Flowβ’20 minutes
We move from βworks on my machineβ to βrecovers on its own.β Learners add exactly-once-ish processing, checkpointing, schema controls, and dead-letter queues. The module emphasizes designing for replay and safe backfills.
What's included
3 videos1 reading1 peer review
3 videosβ’Total 32 minutes
- Exactly-Once with Kafka: What You Really Getβ’14 minutes
- Checkpointing & State: Replaying Without Duplicatesβ’8 minutes
- DLQs in Practice: From Error Handling to Triagingβ’10 minutes
1 readingβ’Total 5 minutes
- Checkpoints & WAL in Structured Streamingβ’5 minutes
1 peer reviewβ’Total 20 minutes
- Hands-On-Learning: Make a Stream Bulletproof: Checkpoints, DLQ, Idempotenceβ’20 minutes
Learners design for failure domainsβtask, job, cluster, and region. We cover backfills vs. reprocessing, Delta time travel for safe fixes, and Kafka replication patterns (MirrorMaker 2, uReplicator) for DR.
What's included
4 videos2 readings1 assignment2 peer reviews
4 videosβ’Total 34 minutes
- Backfills & Reprocessing Without Breaking SLAsβ’10 minutes
- Time Travel & Audits with Delta Tablesβ’8 minutes
- Cross-Region Kafka Replication (MM2/uReplicator)β’11 minutes
- Your Recovery Posture, Summarizedβ’4 minutes
2 readingsβ’Total 10 minutes
- Choosing a Replication Strategy: MM2 vs. uReplicatorβ’5 minutes
- Additional Resourceβ’5 minutes
1 assignmentβ’Total 20 minutes
- Orchestrate & Recover Real-Time Data Pipelinesβ’20 minutes
2 peer reviewsβ’Total 80 minutes
- Hands-On-Learning: DR Fire Drill: Cross-Region Failover & Targeted Backfillβ’20 minutes
- Project: Orchestrate & Recover a Real-Time Pipelineβ’60 minutes
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Frequently asked questions
It means designing a real-time data pipeline as a coordinated workflow that can schedule work, manage dependencies, and recover cleanly when something fails. The course focuses on making pipelines reliable over time, not just getting a script or job to run once.
You would use it when a pipeline needs to run repeatedly, stay observable, and keep data moving even when tasks fail, records are bad, or a dependency becomes unstable. In this course, it is used for real-time and batch-adjacent workflows that need safe retries, replays, and recovery paths.
It sits between writing the logic for individual pipeline steps and running the whole system reliably over time. In this course, that layer turns separate tasks into a repeatable process you can schedule, monitor, backfill, and restore.
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