How to assign a DNS name to a Kafka Kubernetes Nodeport - kubernetes

Question

I have created a Kafka cluster using the Strimzi Kafka operator on minikube to learn the basics. I am trying to access Kafka inside the minikube environment from my Host and for this I created a Kafka Node port:
apiVersion: kafka.strimzi.io/v1beta1
kind: Kafka
metadata:
name: kafka-cluster
spec:
kafka:
version: 2.4.0
replicas: 3
listeners:
plain: {}
tls: {}
external:
type: nodeport
tls: false
overrides:
bootstrap:
nodePort: 32100
brokers:
- broker: 0
nodePort: 32000
- broker: 1
nodePort: 32001
- broker: 2
nodePort: 32002
...
...
...
NAME TYPE CLUSTER-IP EXTERNAL-IP PORT(S) AGE
kafka-cluster-kafka-0 NodePort 10.96.40.176 <none> 9094:32000/TCP 7d
kafka-cluster-kafka-1 NodePort 10.96.138.2 <none> 9094:32001/TCP 7d
kafka-cluster-kafka-2 NodePort 10.96.209.16 <none> 9094:32002/TCP 7d
kafka-cluster-kafka-bootstrap ClusterIP 10.96.216.169 <none> 9091/TCP,9092/TCP,9093/TCP,9404/TCP 7d
kafka-cluster-kafka-brokers ClusterIP None <none> 9091/TCP,9092/TCP,9093/TCP 7d
kafka-cluster-kafka-exporter ClusterIP 10.96.17.45 <none> 9404/TCP 47d
kafka-cluster-kafka-external-bootstrap NodePort 10.96.252.97 <none> 9094:32100/TCP 7d
kafka-cluster-zookeeper-client ClusterIP 10.96.155.34 <none> 9404/TCP,2181/TCP 7d
kafka-cluster-zookeeper-nodes ClusterIP None <none> 2181/TCP,2888/TCP,3888/TCP 7d
All seems to work well so far and I am able to publish messages to the Kafka topic using kafka-cluster-kafka-external-bootstrap (withBootstrapServers("192.168.99.107:32100"). Since I am learning things step-by-step, I wanted to see if I could assign a name instead of referring by the IP address.
Is there an easy way to do it in the Nodeport configuration? I have been stuck on this issue for a week. Appreciate a nudge in the right direction!

Answer 1

That mainly depends on your infrastructure. Minikube is using IP addresses as both node address and loadbalancer address. That is why Strimzi always gives you the address based on the IP address. If you would run it on Kubernetes for example somewhere on AWS, you would out of the box get DNS names instead of the IPs.
Even with Minikube you can configure Strimzi to use some names you specify: https://strimzi.io/docs/latest/full.html#con-kafka-broker-external-listeners-addresses-deployment-configuration-kafka ... but you would need to make sure these route to the Minikube IP address for example by adding them anually to /etc/hosts. But TBH, normally this is not worth it with Minikube.

Answer 2

You should install some Kubernetes bare-metal load balancer, like MetalLB, then use LoadBalancer service instead of NodePort service, get EXTERNAL-IP value of LoadBalancer service and point DNS to this IP.