Charmed Apache Kafka K8s tutorial

The Charmed Apache Kafka Operator delivers automated operations management from Day 0 to Day 2 on the Apache Kafka event streaming platform. It is an open-source, end-to-end, production-ready data platform on top of Juju. As a first step, this tutorial shows you how to get Charmed Apache Kafka K8s up and running, but the tutorial does not stop there. As currently Apache Kafka requires a paired Apache ZooKeeper deployment in production, this operator makes use of the Apache ZooKeeper Operator for various essential functions. Through this tutorial, you will learn a variety of operations, everything from adding replicas to advanced operations such as enabling Transcript Layer Security (TLS).

In this tutorial, we will walk through how to:

• Set up an environment using Multipass with MicroK8s and Juju.
• Deploy Charmed Apache Kafka using a couple of commands.
• Get the admin credentials directly.
• Add high availability with replication.
• Change the admin password.
• Automatically create Apache Kafka users via Juju relations.
• Enable secure connection with TLS.

While this tutorial intends to guide and teach you as you deploy Charmed Apache Kafka, it will be most beneficial if you already have a familiarity with:

• Basic terminal commands.
• Apache Kafka concepts such as replication and users.

Minimum requirements

Before we start, make sure your machine meets the following requirements:

• Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal) or later.
• 8 GB of RAM.
• 2 CPU threads.
• At least 20 GB of available storage.
• Access to the internet for downloading the required snaps and charms.

Step-by-step guide

Here’s an overview of the steps required with links to our separate tutorials that deal with each individual step:

• Set up the environment
• Deploy Charmed Apache Kafka
• Integrate with client applications
• Manage passwords
• Enable encryption
• Reassign partitions
• Cleanup your environment