Confluent Control Center Connect database - apache-kafka

When I create a source or sink connector using Confluent Control Center where does it save the settings related to that connector? Are there files I can browse? We are planning to create 50+ connectors and at one point we need to copy them from one environment to another, I was wondering if there is an easy way to do that.

Kafka Connect in distributed mode uses Kafka topics for storing configuration.
Kafka Connect supports a REST API. You can use this for viewing existing connector configuration, creating new ones (including programatically/automatically for 50+ new connectors), starting/stopping connectors, etc.
The REST API is documented here.

Kafka Connect distributed mode is started with a property file. That property file defines a "config topic".
The connectors you're able to load, however, are not stored there - that's only for the running source/sink configurations.
The classes themselves are bundled as JAR files in the classpaths of the individual Connect Workers, and Control Center has no current way of provisioning new Connect classes. In other words, you must use something like Ansible or manually connect to each worker, download the Connect type you want, and extract it next to the other connects.
For example, let's pretend you wanted the Syslog connector.
You'd already have folders for these under usr/share/java in the Confluent installation
kafka-connect-hdfs
kafka-connect-jdbc
...
So, you download or build that Syslog connector, make a kafka-connect-syslog folder, and drop all necessary jar libraries there.
Once you do this for all connect instances, you'll need to also restart the Kafka Connect process on those machines.
Once Control Center connects back to the Connect server, you'll be able to configure your new Connect classes

Related

Custom Connector for Apache Kafka

I am looking to write a custom connector for Apache Kafka to connect to SQL database to get CDC data. I would like to write a custom connector so I can connect to multiple databases using one connector because all the marketplace connectors only offer one database per connector.
First question: Is it possible to connect to multiple databases using one custom connector? Also, in that custom connector, can I define which topics the data should go to?
Second question: Can I write a custom connector in .NET or it has to be Java? Is there an example that I can look at for custom connector for CDC for a database in .net?
There are no .NET examples. The Kafka Connect API is Java only, and not specific to Confluent.
Source is here - https://github.com/apache/kafka/tree/trunk/connect
Dependency here - https://search.maven.org/artifact/org.apache.kafka/connect-api
looking to write a custom connector ... to connect to SQL database to get CDC data
You could extend or contribute to Debezium, if you really wanted this feature.
connect to multiple databases using one custom connector
If you mean database servers, then not really, no. Your URL would have to be unique per connector task, and there isn't an API to map a task number to a config value. If you mean one server, and multiple database schemas, then I also don't think that is really possible to properly "distribute" within a single connector with multiple tasks (thus why database.names config in Debezium only currently supports one name).
explored debezium but it won't work for us because we have microservices architecture and we have more than 1000 databases for many clients and debezium creates one topic for each table which means it is going to be a massive architecture
Kafka can handle thousands of topics fine. If you run the connector processes in Kubernetes, as an example, then they're centrally deployable, scalable, and configurable from there.
However, I still have concerns over you needing all databases to capture CDC events.
Was also previously suggested to use Maxwell

Where do user-supplied Kafka connectors live?

We've got a managed Kafka setup (Confluent platform, Kafka connect 5.5.1), streaming data from ~40 topics across 8 to 10 connectors. A few weeks ago I noticed that for some of those topics, we don't have any consumers assigned. The consumers which should be reading from or writing to those topics are ones that our org has written and have not changed in months.
Looking through our connector hosts (AWS EC2 instances) I actually cannot see where our connector JAR files exist - which surprises me a lot. We've got all the other connectors there, and when I used confluent hub to install the BigQuery connector that got put under /usr/share/java as one would expect.
Where should home-grown connectors live on the filesystem?
For the record, when I query :8083 using the appropriate calls I can see the connector and it does have an allegedly-running task.
They are picked from the Java CLASSPATH and plugin.path
As for where they should exist, is somewhere that the user account running the connect process has access to read those files.

Kafka Connect instead of Flume Ingestion

I have been looking into the concepts and application of Kafka Connect, and I have even touched one project based on it in one of my intern. Now in my working scenario, now I am considering replacing the architecture of the our real time data ingestion platform which is currently based on flume -> Kafka with Kafka Connect and Kafka.
The reason why I am considering the switch can be concluded mainly into:
But if we use flume we need to install the agent on each remote machine which generates tons of workload for further devops, especially at the place where I am working where the authority of machines is managed in a rigid way that maintaining utilities on machines belonging to other departments.
Another reason for the consideration is that the machines' os environment varies, if we install flumes on a variety of machines , some machine with different os and jdks(I have met some with IBM jdk) just cannot make flume work well which in worst case can result in zero data ingestion.
It looks with Kafka Connect we can deploy it in a centralized way with our Kafka cluster so that the develops cost can go down. Beside, we can avoid installing flumes on machines belonging to others and avoid the risk of incompatible environment to ensure the stable ingestion of data from every remote machine.
Besides, the most ingestion scenario is only to ingest real-time-written log text file on remote machines(on linux and unix file system) into Kafka topics, that is it. So I won't need advanced connectors which is not supported in apache version of Kafka.
But I am not sure if I am understanding the usage or scenario of Kafka Connect the right way. Also I am wondering if Kafka Connect should be deployed on the same machine with the data source machines or if it is ok they resides on different machines. If they can be different then why flume requires the agent to be run on the same machine with the data source? So I wish someone more experienced can give me some lights on that.
Is Kafka Connect appropriate for ingesting data to Kafka? yes
Does Kafka Connect run local to the data source? only if it has to (e.g. reading a local file with Kafka Connect spooldir plug, FilePulse plugin, etc ).
Should you rip out something that works and replace it with Kafka Connect? not unless it's fixing a problem that you have
If you're not using either yet, should you use Kafka Connect instead of Flume? Quite possibly.
Learn more about Kafka Connect here: https://dev.to/rmoff/crunchconf-2019-from-zero-to-hero-with-kafka-connect-81o
For file ingest alone there's other tools too like Filebeat too

two kafka versions running on same cluster

I am trying to configure two Kafka servers on a cluster of 3 nodes. while there is already one Kafka broker(0.8 version) already running with the application. and there is a dependency on that kafka version 0.8 that cannot be disturbed/upgraded .
Now for a POC, I need to configure 1.0.0 since my new code is compatible with this version and above...
my task is to push data from oracle to HIVE tables. for this I am using jdbc connect to fetch data from oracle and hive jdbc to push data to hive tables. it should be fast and easy way...
I need the following help
can I use spark-submit to run this data push to hive?
can I simply copy kafka_2.12-1.0.0 on my Linux server on one of the node and run my code on it. I think I need to configure my Zookeeper.properties and server.properties with ports not in use and start this new zookeeper and kafka services separately??? please note I cannot disturb existing zookeeper and kafka already running.
kindly help me achieve it.
I'm not sure running two very memory intensive applications (Kafka and/or Kafka Connect) on the same machines is considered very safe. Especially if you do not want to disturb existing applications. Realistically, a rolling restart w/ upgrade will be best for performance and feature reasons. And, no, two Kafka versions should not be part of the same cluster, unless you are in the middle of a rolling upgrade scenario.
If at all possible, please use new hardware... I assume Kafka 0.8 is even running on machines that could be old, and out of warranty? Then, there's no significant reason that I know of not to even use a newer version of Kafka, but yes, extract it on any machine you'd like, use perhaps use something like Ansible, or preferred config management tool you choose, to do it for you.
You can share the same Zookeeper cluster actually, just make sure it's not the same settings. For example,
Cluster 0.8
zookeeper.connect=zoo.example.com:2181/kafka08
Cluster 1.x
zookeeper.connect=zoo.example.com:2181/kafka10
Also, not clear where Spark fits into this architecture. Please don't use JDBC sink for Hive. Use the proper HDFS Kafka Connect sink, which has direct Hive support via the metastore. And while the JDBC source might work for Oracle, chances are, you might already be able to afford a license for GoldenGate
i am able to achieve two kafka version 0.8 and 1.0 running on the same server with respective zookeepers.
steps followed:
1. copy the version package folder to the server at desired location
2. changes configuration setting in zookeeper.properties and server.propeties(here you need to set port which are not in used on that particular server)
3. start the services and push data to kafka topics.
Note: this requirement is only for a POC and not an ideal production environment. as answered above we must upgrade to next level rather than what is practiced above.

Kafka and IIDR CDC

I am trying to build a CDC pipeline using : DB2--IBM CDC --Kafka
and I am trying to figure out the right way to setup this .
I tried below things -
1.Setup a 3 node kafka cluster on linux on prem
2.Installed IIDR CDC software on linux on prem using - setup-iidr-11.4.0.1-5085-linux-x86.bin file . The CDC instance is up and running .
The various online documentation suggest to install 'IIDR management console ' to configure the source datastore and CDC server configuration and also Kafka subscription configuration to build the pipeline .
Currently I do not have the management console installed .
Few questions on this -
1.Is there any alternative to IBM CDC management console for setting up the kafka-CDC pipeline ?
2.How can I get the IIDR management console ? and if we install it on our local windows dekstop and try to connect to CDC/Kafka which are on remote linux servers, will it work ?
3.Any other method to setup the data ingestion IIDR CDC to Kafka ?
I am fairly new to CDC/ IIDR , please help !
I own the development of the IIDR Kafka target for our CDC Replication product.
Management Console is the best way to setup the subscription initially. You can install it on a windows box.
Technically I believe you can use our scripting language called CHCCLP to setup a subscription as well. But I recommend using the GUI.
Here are links to our resources on our IIDR (CDC) Kafka Target. Search for the "Kafka" section.
"https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/wikis/home?lang=en#!/wiki/W8d78486eafb9_4a06_a482_7e7962f5ac59/page/IIDR%20Wiki"
An example of setting up a subscription and replicating is this video
https://ibm.box.com/s/ur8jokg6tclsx5fcav5g86a3n57mqtd5
Management console and access server can be obtained from IBM fix central.
I have installed MC/Access server on my VM and on my personal windows box to use it against my linux VMs. You will need connectivity of course.
You can definitely follow up with our Support and they'll be able to sort you out. Plus we have docs in our knowledge centre on MC starting here.... https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/SSTRGZ_11.4.0/com.ibm.cdcdoc.mcadminguide.doc/concepts/overview_of_cdc.html
You'll find our Kafka target is very flexible it comes with five different formats to write data into Kafka, and you can choose to capture data in an audit format, or the Kafka compaction compatible key, null for a delete method.
Additionally you can even use the product to write several records to several different topics in several formats from a single insert operation. This is useful if some of your consumer apps want JSON and others Avro binary. Additionally you can use this to put all the data to more secure topics, and write out just some of the data to topics that more people have access to.
We even have customers who encrypt columns in flight when replicating.
Finally the product's transformations can be parallelized even if you choose to only use one producer to write out data.
Actually one more finally, we additionally provide the option to use a special consumer which produces database ACID semantics for data written into Kafka and shred across topics and partitions. It re-orders it. we call it the transactionally consistent consumer. It provides operation order, bookmarks for restarting applications, and allows parallelism in performance but ordered, exactly once, deduplicated consumption of data.
From my talk at the Kafka Summit...
https://www.confluent.io/kafka-summit-sf18/a-solution-for-leveraging-kafka-to-provide-end-to-end-acid-transactions