The Kafka profile enables you to configure which topic and which embedded service key to use. The Kafka profile is loaded when you start a workflow that depends on it. Changes to the profile become effective when you restart the workflow.

Configuration

To create a new Kafka profile configuration, click the New Configuration button and then select Kafka Profile from the Configurations dialog.

The contents of the menus in the menu bar may change depending on which configuration type has been opened. The Kafka profile uses the standard menu items and buttons that are visible for all configurations, and these are described in Build View.

The Kafka profile configuration contains two tabs: Connectivity and Advanced.

Connectivity tab

The Connectivity tab is displayed by default when creating or opening a Kafka profile.

Kafka profile configuration - Connectivity tab

The Connectivity tab contains the following settings:

Setting	Description

Setting	Description
Topic	Enter the Kafka topic that you want to use for your configuration.
Host	If you are using external Kafka, enter the hostname for Zookeeper.
Port	If you are using external Kafka, enter the port for Zookeeper.
Kafka Brokers	A Broker is a node in a Kafka cluster. If you are using external Kafka, you must add Kafka Brokers. Use the Add button to enter the addresses of the Kafka Brokers that you want to connect to.
Security Profile

Note!

supports Kafka version 2.4.0 or later.

Advanced tab

In the Advanced tab, you can configure properties for optimizing the performance of the Kafka Producer and Consumer. The Advanced tab contains two tabs: Producer and Consumer.

Producer tab

In the Producer tab, you can configure the properties of the Kafka forwarding agent.

Kafka profile configuration - Producer tab in the Advanced tab

The property producer.abortunknown=true sets the agent to abort if the broker replies with Unknown topic or partition. For further information on the other properties, see the text in the Advanced producer properties field, or refer to https://kafka.apache.org.

When running in Acknowledged execution mode, the property producer.full.response determines if the data sent to the Kafka log is also included in the response UDR. The value is set to true by default. Setting the value to false reduces the memory footprint.

For information on how to configure the properties for SSL and Kerberos, please refer to https://www.cloudera.com/documentation/kafka/latest/topics/kafka_security.html.

Note!

Once you have edited the JAAS file required for Kerberos, you will need to restart the EC to register the changes made.

Note!

If you make any changes to the security configuration of the Kafka Producer, any topics used must be recreated before they can be used.

For further information on the other properties, see the text in the Advanced producer properties field or refer to https://kafka.apache.org.

Enabling Compression for Kafka

Compression for messages to be sent to Kafka brokers can now be enabled from the Advanced producer properties. The compression codec utilized by the system follows the standard Kafka library, where Gzip, Lz4 and Snappy are supported.

To enable compression, just add the property compression.type into the Advanced producer properties. Followed by the value, gzip, lz4, snappy or none.

Consumer tab

In the Consumer tab, you can configure the properties of the Kafka collection agent.

See the text in the Advanced consumer properties field for further information about the properties.