Apache Kafka is a framework implementation of a software bus using stream processing. It is an open source software platform developed by the Apache Software Foundation and written in Scala and Java. The project aims to provide a unified, high-throughput, low-latency platform for handling real-time data feeds.

This Kafka installation uses an early release project called Apache Kafka Raft (KRaft) . It’s a project that has removed the dependency on ZooKeeper!

kcat is a command-line utility that you can use to test and debug Apache Kafka deployments. You can use kcat to produce, consume, and list topic and partition information for Kafka. Described as “netcat for Kafka,” it is a Swiss army knife of tools for inspecting and creating data in Kafka.

In this lab, you will learn how to:

    ☐ Use Kafka without ZooKeeper
    ☐ Install a small Kafka cluster with Apache KRaft
    ☐ Test a Kafka installation using kcat