Experience Kafka Deployment And Administration: Failover And Recovery

Apache Kafka is an open-source platform for data streaming. It was first developed by LinkedIn and donated to Apache Software foundation later. Developed with an aim to provide users with a high-throughput platform to handle real-time data, Kafka is written in Java and Scala. However, at scale the real time applications require a lot of moving pieces, for ingesting and processing data. These complexities become difficult to resolve. That’s why Ksolves uses best practices for Kafka failover and recovery while deploying Kafka. 

In this article we will discuss a few best practices we use here at Ksolves to optimize Kafka deployment and administration.

Apache Kafka deployment and administration

Everyone who is familiar with Kafka has been using machines with small clusters, but when Kafka is deployed to production a lot of challenges occur. There are few recommendations that one should consider during Kafka deployment using kubernetes.  

After deployment, another important thing is to manage the tasks. This is known as Apache Kafka administration. It is a window program that on connecting with Kafka cluster does all the tasks, list brokers, topics, create new topics and update existing ones.

Let’s now look at the best practices to overcome deployment challenges.

Automate Deployment

The most important best practice for Kafka failover and recovery is to automate the deployment process. One can also take help of Ansible as it provides an efficient way to deploy and manage Kafka services. This kind of strategy can use automation for consumption, data partitioning, etc. 

Whenever something goes wrong with an application, it becomes difficult to find out whether the failure was due to the Kafka issue or a spark issue or a combination of various other problems. Finding out and isolating these problems manually can take a lot of time and require continuous trial and error techniques. 

Plan for Statefulness

Kafka is known as a stateful database that means, the computer keeps track of the state of interactions. Sometimes when you restart the Kafka machine, you can end up with data loss. That is why Kafka deployment using kubernetes is advised to run Kafka safely.

Use a canary

Apache Kafka administration requires proper tracking of clusters. The best way to track every detail of the cluster is to use Canary. It is a client that produces as well as consumes artificial events so that it can monitor the system. It is also helpful in simulating the actual user activity and identify problems from the user’s point of view 

Even if the cluster looks absolutely perfect.

Filter logs 

Apache Kafka administration plan needs to keep only the required logs by configuring the logs parameters. Customizing log behaviour is the best way to ensure that the log doesn’t become a management problem. Set up the log retention policy, cleanups, compressions for log management.

Store offsets in Hbase instead of ZooKeeper

Everyone who uses Apache Kafka is familiar with its default file application Apache ZooKeeper. However, using Hbase to store offset can increase performance as compared to ZooKeeper. Also for large deployments, ZooKeeper can become a blockage. The transition of offset from ZooKeeper to Hbase allows the ZooKeeper to be available for all other services that are running in the cluster. 

Retain low latency

We need to  ensure that the brokers are located in the nearest regions to the clients to cope up with latency concerns. They also need to consider network performance before selecting instance types.  

Full replication

It is best advised to consider replication data across all nodes for a better Apache Kafka administration and ensure that the data is replicated along all in-sync replicas. 

Orchestrate Kafka with other tools

Try other data processing platforms  and tools that can compliment and also help in Kafka failover and recovery. You can combine Kafka with spark, MapReduce or flink for real-time data streaming. 

Utilize Apache Kafka administration and deployment services with Ksolves

As we have presented you the best practices for a better Apache Kafka administration along with failover and recovery solutions. Adopting these best practices can be extremely beneficial for organizations all around the world. Ksolves being the leading Apache Kafka development company across India and the USA bring on table the best kafka services with 100% efficiency. If you wish to know more about the Kafka services, write to us in the comment section below or give us a call for a free demo. 

Contact Us for any Query

Email : sales@ksolves.com

Call : +91 8130704295

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