Datadog uses Apache Kafka as a buffer for its Data Platform, handling hundreds of trillions of observability events daily. To achieve real-time reliability at scale, Datadog built the Streaming Platform, which abstracts Kafka's complexity and enables resilient pipelines decoupled from specific clusters. The platform features a dynamic control plane that allows for real-time failovers, rebalancing, and traffic redirection without reconfiguring or waiting for redeployments. It also introduces intelligent load balancing, a custom control plane coordinator called the Assigner, and overcomes head-of-line blocking issues through Stream lanes and an advanced commit log. The Streaming Platform is designed to treat Kafka infrastructure like commodity hardware, allowing it to operate as a self-healing system. Datadog has developed a custom client library, libstreaming, built for scale and optimized for its specific needs, enabling seamless integration with the Streaming Platform and real-time reliability across all applications.