Connect to a Kafka cluster

Overview

Before you connect to the Kafka cluster, you must check your network environment, and from which network you would like to connect to the cluster. There are three scenarios of connecting.

• Connect to the cluster within the same Kubernetes cluster.
• Connect to a kafka cluster from outside of the Kubernetes cluster but in the same VPC.
• Connect to a kafka cluster from public internet.

Connect to a kafka cluster within the Kubernetes cluster

Within the same Kubernetes cluster, you can directly access the Kafka cluster with ClusterIp service:9092.

Steps:

1. Get the address of the Kafka ClusterIP service port No..

   kubectl get svc 
   > 
   NAME                            TYPE        CLUSTER-IP    EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)                               AGE
   kubernetes                      ClusterIP   10.43.0.1     <none>        443/TCP                               9d
   kafka-cluster-broker-headless   ClusterIP   None          <none>        9092/TCP,9093/TCP,9094/TCP,5556/TCP   7d16h
   kafka-cluster-broker            ClusterIP   10.43.8.124   <none>        9093/TCP,9092/TCP,5556/TCP            7d16h

2. Connect to the Kafka cluster with the port No..

   Below is an example of connecting with the official client script.

   a. Start client pod

   kubectl run kafka-producer --restart='Never' --image docker.io/bitnami/kafka:3.3.2-debian-11-r54 --command -- sleep infinity
   kubectl run kafka-consumer --restart='Never' --image docker.io/bitnami/kafka:3.3.2-debian-11-r54 --command -- sleep infinity

   b. Login to kafka-producer

   kubectl exec -ti kafka-producer -- bash

   c. Create topic

   kafka-topics.sh --create --topic quickstart-events --bootstrap-server xxx-broker:9092

   d. Create producer

   kafka-console-producer.sh --topic quickstart-events --bootstrap-server xxx-broker:9092 

   e. Enter："Hello, KubeBlocks" and press Enter.

   f. Start a new terminal session and login to kafka-consumer.

   kubectl exec -ti kafka-consumer -- bash

   g. Create consumer and specify consuming topic, and consuming message from the beginning.

   kafka-console-consumer.sh --topic quickstart-events --from-beginning --bootstrap-server xxx-broker:9092

   And you get the output 'Hello, KubeBlocks'.

Connect to a Kafka cluster from outside of the Kubernetes cluster but in the same VPC

If you use AWS EKS, you may want to access to the Kafka cluster from EC2 instance. This section shows how to perform the connection.

Steps:

1. Set the value of host-network-accessible as true.

   kbcli cluster create kafka-cluster --cluster-definition kafka --host-network-accessible=true

2. Get the corresponding ELB address.

   kubectl get svc 

   

   note

   xxxxxx-xxx.cn-northwest-1.elb.amazonaws.com.cn is the ELB address accessible within the same VPC of K8s.

3. Use the ELB address to connect.

   In the above example, the ELB address is a0e01377fa33xxx-xxx.cn-northwest-1.elb.amazonaws.com.cn:9092.

Connect to a Kafka cluster from public internet

caution

The current version only supports Kafka broker with a single replica (combined: --replicas=1 or separated: --broker-replicas=1) to adpot the following approach.

Steps:

1. Set the --publicly-accessible value as true when creating cluster.

   kbcli cluster create kafka-cluster --cluster-definition kafka --publicly-accessible=true

2. Get the corresponding ELB address.

   kubectl get svc

   

   note

   xxxx-xxxx.cn-northwest-1.elb.amazonaws.com.cn is the ELB address accessible over the public network.

3. Configure hostname mapping.

   1. Login to the remote machine.

   2. Check ELB address IP address.

      nslookup a96caad7bab59xxxx-xxxx.cn-northwest-1.elb.amazonaws.com.cn

   3. Gain the Broker address.

      The Broker address follows a fixed format. Just replace {clusterName} in the string below with the Kafka Cluster Name.

      {clusterName}-broker-0.{clusterName}-broker-headless.default.svc

   4. Configure /etc/hosts mapping.

      vi /etc/hosts
      # Add at the bottom. Make sure to replace {clusterName} and the IP address with the actual values:
      52.83.xx.xx {clusterName}-broker-0.{clusterName}-broker-headless.default.svc

4. Use ELB address to connect.

   In the above example, the ELB address is xxxx-xxxx.cn-northwest-1.elb.amazonaws.com.cn:9092.