Can you use Consul instead of Zookeeper for Kafka - apache-kafka

I am looking at using Kafka but the documentation states that I need to set up Zookeeper. I already have a service discovery set up, I am using Consul. I don't want to have to look after Zookeeper as well.
Can you use Consul instead of Zookeeper to run Kafka? If so is there any documentation on how to do this anywhere?

Apache Kafka currently supports only Apache Zookeeper. It doesn't have any out of the box support for Consul.

This long-standing Kafka issue tracks adding Zookeeper alternatives. It may never happen, so in the meantime, there's the option of running a Zookeeper proxy like zetcd or parkeeper in front of etcd or Consul.

Kafka only uses Zookeeper for broker and topic discovery. Short of adding Consul support to the code base yourself, there is no other alternatives.

Related

Attaching Jolokia to kafka brokers deployed using Strimzi operator

I am deploying a kafka cluster on Kubernetes using Strimzi kafka operator. I need to be able to query Kafka JMX MBEANS remotely through HTTP/REST using Jolokia (Jolokia is an agent that converts and exposes JMX MBEAN measurements for querying over HTTP…).
AFAIK, Strimzi documentation does not provide any hint on how to attach Jolokia to kafka brokers. Hence can you please provide a hint on what kind of modifications to the deployment files (strimzi operator and/or cluster deployment files) so that Jolokia is attached to the brokers/Zookeeper instances.
Last I checked, Strimzi offers Prometheus JMX Exporter already, not Jolokia. Prometheus also offers Mbeans over HTTP. https://strimzi.io/docs/operators/latest/overview.html#metrics-overview_str
But the concept is the same, and the fact you're using Strimzi doesn't really matter, since the process is the same regardless of how Kafka is running - you need that JVM agent added into KAFKA_OPTS environment variable. You might want to use a custom docker image that has the Jolokia agent available

Kafka Connect with Amazon MSK

How do I use Kafka Connect adapters with Amazon MSK?
As per the AWS documentation, it supports Kafka connect but not documented about how to setup adapters and use it.
Edit Oct 2021: MSK Connect has been launched, see https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/introducing-amazon-msk-connect-stream-data-to-and-from-your-apache-kafka-clusters-using-managed-connectors/
AFAIK Amazon MSK does not provide managed connectors, so you have to run them yourself. This is done by running the Kafka Connect worker process (a JVM) and then providing it one or more connector configurations to run.
From the point of view of a Kafka Connect worker it just needs a Kafka cluster to connect to; it shouldn't matter whether it's MSK or on-premises, since it's ultimately 'just' a consumer/producer underneath.
You can see more, including a live demo, here: https://rmoff.dev/bbuzz19-kafka-connect
For an example of configuring Kafka Connect to use a cloud-hosted Kafka platform (in this case, Confluent Cloud), see this article.
If you are interested in managed connectors in the Cloud, check out the connectors that are provided in Confluent Cloud.
Disclaimer: I work for Confluent :)
AWS now supports MSK Connect, a new feature of MSK service based on Kafka Connect allowing you to deploy managed Kafka connectors built for Kafka connect
Check the announcement here: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/introducing-amazon-msk-connect-stream-data-to-and-from-your-apache-kafka-clusters-using-managed-connectors/
There are two aspects to this
Kafka Connect is a framework which should be deployed separately from kafka brokers. MSK only provides kafka brokers. If you want to use Kafka Connect with MSK you would need to use EC2 instances and deploy the kafka binaries.Kafka Connect framework is bundled along with kafka
Coming to connectors if you donot have a confluent subscription or similar - I am afraid your choices get very limited. But having said you can always write your own connectors. Writing new connectors is not that difficult rather you can apply your business specific logic and be on your way quite quickly.

How to retrieve zookeeper host details from Kafka brokerslist

I have list of Brokers for my Kafka cluster. How can I get the zookeeper host using Brokerslist?
If I got your question right you want to register your brokers at a zookeeper cluster. This actually works the other way round: You have to tell each broker where your zookeeper-server (or cluster) can be found. Have a look at the broker configuration setting zookeeper.connect. Together with the broker.id it will register each broker at the zookeeper cluster.
Example:
broker.id=1
zookeeper.connect=zk-host-1:2181,zk-host-2:2181,zk-host-3:2181
Hope that answers your question.
You cannot.
Zookeeper is intended to be abstracted away. There is no such API or method to get Zookeepers connected to a broker.
You'll need to SSH to a broker in that list (which you could do from Java}

is it ok to use the zookeeper within kafka in production?

kafka has a zookeeper.
Is it ok to use it on production?
bin/zookeeper-server-start.sh
I want to use SASL with kafka. However I cann't find a way to chieve it with the offical zookeeper. I did make it work with the kafka zookeeper. Therefore I want to know if it's ok to use the zookeeper which is in kafka on production environment.
Yes the zookeeper that comes bundled with Apache Kafka is great for production use. No need to install any different version of zookeeper from anywhere else.

Can I query any zookeeper node to get any data?

I have a small zookeeper cluster of 3 nodes. I also have another software that needs to be configured to talk to zookeeper, also running in a cluster of 3 nodes, on the same host.
I don't know anything about how zookeeper works. Do I have to configure this other software to talk to all hosts, or should it work to just configure it to talk to localhost zookeeper?
Put another way, can a query to any zookeeper node to get any data?
If you had a ZooKeeper cluster, so you can query to any ZooKeeper node and get eventually consistent data.
For how ZooKeeper works you can check this awesome post here:Explaining Apache ZooKeeper
A lots of good projects use ZooKeeper as a backbone: HBase, Kafka, please Google it, and learn from those projects for more digest.