Apache Kafka Broker

The Apache Kafka Broker is a native Broker implementation, that reduces network hops, supports any Kafka version, and has a better integration with Apache Kafka for the Knative Broker and Trigger model.

Notable features are:

• Control plane High Availability
• Horizontally scalable data plane
• Extensively configurable
• Ordered delivery of events based on CloudEvents partitioning extension
• Support any Kafka version, see compatibility matrix

Prerequisites

1. Installing Eventing using YAML files.
2. An Apache Kafka cluster (if you’re just getting started you can follow Strimzi Quickstart page).

Installation

1. Install the Kafka controller by entering the following command:

   kubectl apply --filename https://github.com/knative-sandbox/eventing-kafka-broker/releases/download/v0.25.0/eventing-kafka-controller.yaml

2. Install the Kafka Broker data plane by entering the following command:

   kubectl apply --filename https://github.com/knative-sandbox/eventing-kafka-broker/releases/download/v0.25.0/eventing-kafka-broker.yaml

3. Verify that kafka-controller, kafka-broker-receiver and kafka-broker-dispatcher are running, by entering the following command:

   kubectl get deployments.apps -n knative-eventing

   Example output:

   NAME                           READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
   eventing-controller            1/1     1            1           10s
   eventing-webhook               1/1     1            1           9s
   kafka-controller               1/1     1            1           3s
   kafka-broker-dispatcher        1/1     1            1           4s
   kafka-broker-receiver          1/1     1            1           5s

Create a Kafka Broker

A Kafka Broker object looks like this:

apiVersion: eventing.knative.dev/v1
kind: Broker
metadata:
  annotations:
    # case-sensitive
    eventing.knative.dev/broker.class: Kafka
  name: default
  namespace: default
spec:
  # Configuration specific to this broker.
  config:
    apiVersion: v1
    kind: ConfigMap
    name: kafka-broker-config
    namespace: knative-eventing
  # Optional dead letter sink, you can specify either:
  #  - deadLetterSink.ref, which is a reference to a Callable
  #  - deadLetterSink.uri, which is an absolute URI to a Callable (It can potentially be out of the Kubernetes cluster)
  delivery:
    deadLetterSink:
      ref:
        apiVersion: serving.knative.dev/v1
        kind: Service
        name: dlq-service

spec.config should reference any ConfigMap that looks like the following:

apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  name: kafka-broker-config
  namespace: knative-eventing
data:
  # Number of topic partitions
  default.topic.partitions: "10"
  # Replication factor of topic messages.
  default.topic.replication.factor: "1"
  # A comma separated list of bootstrap servers. (It can be in or out the k8s cluster)
  bootstrap.servers: "my-cluster-kafka-bootstrap.kafka:9092"

This ConfigMap is installed in the cluster. You can edit the configuration or create a new one with the same values depending on your needs.

NOTE: The default.topic.replication.factor value must be less than or equal to the number of Kafka broker instances in your cluster. For example, if you only have one Kafka broker, the default.topic.replication.factor value should not be more than 1.

Set as default broker implementation

To set the Kafka broker as the default implementation for all brokers in the Knative deployment, you can apply global settings by modifying the config-br-defaults ConfigMap in the knative-eventing namespace.

This allows you to avoid configuring individual or per-namespace settings for each broker, such as metadata.annotations.eventing.knative.dev/broker.class or spec.config.

The following YAML is an example of a config-br-defaults ConfigMap using Kafka broker as the default implementation.

apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  name: config-br-defaults
  namespace: knative-eventing
data:
  default-br-config: |
    clusterDefault:
      brokerClass: Kafka
      apiVersion: v1
      kind: ConfigMap
      name: kafka-broker-config
      namespace: knative-eventing
    namespaceDefaults:
      namespace1:
        brokerClass: Kafka
        apiVersion: v1
        kind: ConfigMap
        name: kafka-broker-config
        namespace: knative-eventing
      namespace2:
        brokerClass: Kafka
        apiVersion: v1
        kind: ConfigMap
        name: kafka-broker-config
        namespace: knative-eventing

Security

Apache Kafka supports different security features, Knative supports the followings:

• Authentication using SASL without encryption
• Authentication using SASL and encryption using SSL
• Authentication and encryption using SSL
• Encryption using SSL without client authentication

To enable security features, in the ConfigMap referenced by broker.spec.config, we can reference a Secret:

apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
   name: kafka-broker-config
   namespace: knative-eventing
data:
   # Other configurations
   # ...
   # Reference a Secret called my_secret
   auth.secret.ref.name: my_secret

The Secret my_secret must exist in the same namespace of the ConfigMap referenced by broker.spec.config, in this case: knative-eventing.

Note: Certificates and keys must be in PEM format.

Authentication using SASL

Knative supports the following SASL mechanisms:

• PLAIN
• SCRAM-SHA-256
• SCRAM-SHA-512

To use a specific SASL mechanism replace <sasl_mechanism> with the mechanism of your choice.

Authentication using SASL without encryption

kubectl create secret --namespace <namespace> generic <my_secret> \
  --from-literal=protocol=SASL_PLAINTEXT \
  --from-literal=sasl.mechanism=<sasl_mechanism> \
  --from-literal=user=<my_user> \
  --from-literal=password=<my_password>

Authentication using SASL and encryption using SSL

kubectl create secret --namespace <namespace> generic <my_secret> \
  --from-literal=protocol=SASL_SSL \
  --from-literal=sasl.mechanism=<sasl_mechanism> \
  --from-file=ca.crt=caroot.pem \
  --from-literal=user=<my_user> \
  --from-literal=password=<my_password>

Encryption using SSL without client authentication

kubectl create secret --namespace <namespace> generic <my_secret> \
  --from-literal=protocol=SSL \
  --from-file=ca.crt=<my_caroot.pem_file_path> \
  --from-literal=user.skip=true

Authentication and encryption using SSL

kubectl create secret --namespace <namespace> generic <my_secret> \
  --from-literal=protocol=SSL \
  --from-file=ca.crt=<my_caroot.pem_file_path> \
  --from-file=user.crt=<my_cert.pem_file_path> \
  --from-file=user.key=<my_key.pem_file_path>

NOTE: ca.crt can be omitted to fallback to use system’s root CA set.

Kafka Producer and Consumer configurations

Knative exposes all available Kafka producer and consumer configurations that can be modified to suit your workloads.

You can change these configurations by modifying the config-kafka-broker-data-plane ConfigMap in the knative-eventing namespace.

Documentation for the settings available in this ConfigMap is available on the Apache Kafka website, in particular, Producer configurations and Consumer configurations.

Enable debug logging for data plane components

The following YAML shows the default logging configuration for data plane components, that is created during the installation step:

apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  name: kafka-config-logging
  namespace: knative-eventing
data:
  config.xml: |
    <configuration>
      <appender name="jsonConsoleAppender" class="ch.qos.logback.core.ConsoleAppender">
        <encoder class="net.logstash.logback.encoder.LogstashEncoder"/>
      </appender>
      <root level="INFO">
        <appender-ref ref="jsonConsoleAppender"/>
      </root>
    </configuration>

To change the logging level to DEBUG, you must:

1. Apply the following kafka-config-logging ConfigMap or replace level="INFO" with level="DEBUG" to the ConfigMap kafka-config-logging:

   apiVersion: v1
   kind: ConfigMap
   metadata:
     name: kafka-config-logging
     namespace: knative-eventing
   data:
     config.xml: |
       <configuration>
         <appender name="jsonConsoleAppender" class="ch.qos.logback.core.ConsoleAppender">
           <encoder class="net.logstash.logback.encoder.LogstashEncoder"/>
         </appender>
         <root level="DEBUG">
           <appender-ref ref="jsonConsoleAppender"/>
         </root>
       </configuration>

2. Restart the kafka-broker-receiver and the kafka-broker-dispatcher, by entering the following commands:

   kubectl rollout restart deployment -n knative-eventing kafka-broker-receiver
   kubectl rollout restart deployment -n knative-eventing kafka-broker-dispatcher

Configuring the order of delivered events

When dispatching events, the Kafka broker can be configured to support different delivery ordering guarantees.

You can configure the delivery order of events using the kafka.eventing.knative.dev/delivery.order annotation on the Trigger object:

apiVersion: eventing.knative.dev/v1
kind: Trigger
metadata:
  name: my-service-trigger
  annotations:
     kafka.eventing.knative.dev/delivery.order: ordered
spec:
  broker: my-kafka-broker
  subscriber:
    ref:
      apiVersion: serving.knative.dev/v1
      kind: Service
      name: my-service

The supported consumer delivery guarantees are:

• unordered: An unordered consumer is a non-blocking consumer that delivers messages unordered, while preserving proper offset management.
• ordered: An ordered consumer is a per-partition blocking consumer that waits for a successful response from the CloudEvent subscriber before it delivers the next message of the partition.

unordered is the default ordering guarantee, while ordered is considered unstable, use with caution.

Additional information

• To report a bug or request a feature, open an issue in the eventing-kafka-broker repository.