Company
Date Published
Author
Brendan O'Leary
Word count
2431
Language
English
Hacker News points
None

Summary

The blog post outlines a detailed guide for migrating from Apache Airflow to Prefect, emphasizing the benefits of Prefect's flexible and Pythonic workflows over the complexity of Airflow. It suggests an incremental approach to migration, running both systems concurrently to minimize risk and downtime. The guide covers auditing existing Airflow DAGs to prioritize which workflows to transition first, setting up a Prefect environment, and preparing the team through training and pilot migrations. It explains the process of converting Airflow DAGs to Prefect flows, highlighting Prefect's ergonomic API, which allows for cleaner and more maintainable code without the boilerplate required in Airflow. The blog also details infrastructure adaptation from Airflow to Prefect, where Prefect's work pools replace Airflow's executors, offering greater scalability and reduced overhead. Real-world success stories, such as those from Endpoint and Cash App, illustrate significant improvements in workflow throughput, cost reduction, and enhanced error handling post-migration, encouraging teams to consider this transition for more efficient workflow orchestration.