Getting a 288-core machine might be easier than setting up Kafka; I'm guessing that it would be a couple of weeks of work to learn enough to install Kafka the first time. Installing Postgres is trivial.
Kafka et al definitely have their place, but I think most people would be much better off reaching for a simpler queue system (or for some things, just using Postgres) unless you really need the advanced features.
* Lack of interest for other team members, which translated to doing what they thought was a sufficiently minimal amount of knowledge transfer
* An (unwise) attitude that "it's already set up and configured, and terraformed, so we can just acquire that knowledge if and when it's needed"
* Kafka guy left a lot faster than anybody really expected, not leaving much time and practically no documentation
* The rest of the team was already overwhelmed with other responsiblities and didn't have much bandwidth available
* Nobody wanted to be the person/people that ended up "owning" it, so there was a reverse incentive
Postgres is the solution in question of the article because I simply assume the majority of companies will start with Postgres as their first piece of infra. And it is often the case. If not - MySQL, SQLite, whatever. Just optimize for the thing you know, and see if it can handle your use case (often you'll be surprised)
You should be able to install within minutes.
None of this applies to Redpanda.
Yet to also be fair to the Kafka folks, Zookeeper is no longer default and hasn't been since April 2025 with the release of Apache Kafka 4.0:
"Kafka 4.0's completed transition to KRaft eliminates ZooKeeper (KIP-500), making clusters easier to operate at any scale."
Source: https://developer.confluent.io/newsletter/introducing-apache...