Overview of KubeBlocks Kafka Addon

Apache Kafka is a distributed streaming platform designed to build real-time pipelines and can be used as a message broker or as a replacement for a log aggregation solution for big data applications.

A broker is a Kafka server that stores data and handles requests from producers and consumers. Kafka clusters consist of multiple brokers, each identified by a unique ID. Brokers work together to distribute and replicate data across the cluster.
KRaft was introduced in Kafka 3.3.1 in October 2022 as an alternative to Zookeeper. A subset of brokers are designated as controllers, and these controllers provide the consensus services that used to be provided by Zookeeper.

Key features

Lifecycle Management

KubeBlocks simplifies Kafka operations with comprehensive lifecycle management:

Feature	Description
Horizontal Scaling	Scale replicas in/out to adjust capacity
Vertical Scaling	Adjust CPU/memory resources for Kafka instances
Volume Expansion	Dynamically increase storage capacity without downtime
Restart Operations	Controlled cluster restarts with minimal disruption
Start/Stop	Temporarily suspend/resume cluster operations
Custom Services	Expose specialized database endpoints
Replica Management	Safely decommission or rebuild specific replicas
Version Upgrades	Perform minor version upgrades seamlessly
Advanced Scheduling	Customize pod placement and resource allocation
Monitoring	Integrated Prometheus metrics collection
Logging	Centralized logs via Loki Stack

Supported Versions

KubeBlocks Kafka Addon supports these Kafka versions:

Major Version	Supported Minor Versions
3.x	3.3.2
2.x	2.7.0