Analytics architecture brief

IoT Sensor Data Lake

A telemetry pipeline for hardware data with attention to storage format, query cost, retention, and latency tradeoffs.

Status Architecture brief
AWS focus
IoT CoreFirehoseS3AthenaParquet
AWS
Sensor device
IoT
AWS IoT Core rule IoT Core
FH
Kinesis Data Firehose Firehose
S3
S3 data lake S3
SQL
Athena SQL queries Athena

Problem

Hardware telemetry is useful for trend analysis, maintenance, and anomaly review, but it should not require a constantly running database or server.

Design

  • IoT Core authenticates devices and receives MQTT messages.
  • Rules route accepted messages into Firehose.
  • Firehose batches records and can convert JSON into a query-friendly layout.
  • S3 stores the durable data lake, and Athena queries it only when analysis is needed.

Tradeoff

Firehose introduces buffering delay, which is fine for analytical storage but not ideal for immediate safety alerts. If real-time action is required, the design should add an event path through Lambda or Kinesis Data Streams.