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Replicating Data Between Two Kafka Clusters

Kafka can be deployed in mutliple data centers in an "Active-Active", "Active-Passive", or centralized architecture. In this hands-on lab, we simulate an active-passive architecture in which data from one cluster is replicated to another cluster using a tool called Replicator. Replicator, like MirrorMaker, allows you to preserve topic configuration in the source cluster while replicating the messages from one cluster to another.

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Path Info

Level
Clock icon Intermediate
Duration
Clock icon 1h 45m
Last updated
Clock icon May 17, 2025

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Table of Contents

  1. Challenge

    Start the Destination Cluster

    Note: After connecting via ssh, please give the lab extra time to finish provisioning. If you get a dpkg frontend lock message when running sudo apt install -y default-jdk, please give the lab more time before retrying the command.

    Start Zookeeper.

    bin/zookeeper-server-start etc/kafka/zookeeper.properties

    Start Kafka.

    bin/kafka-server-start etc/kafka/server.properties

  2. Challenge

    Start the Origin Cluster

    Make a copy of the configuration files.

    cp etc/kafka/zookeeper.properties /tmp/zookeeper_origin.properties
cp etc/kafka/server.properties /tmp/server_origin.properties

    Change the port numbers for the origin cluster.

    sed -i -e "s/2181/2171/g" /tmp/zookeeper_origin.properties
sed -i -e "s/9092/9082/g" /tmp/server_origin.properties
sed -i -e "s/2181/2171/g" /tmp/server_origin.properties
sed -i -e "s/#listen/listen/g" /tmp/server_origin.properties

    Change the data directory for the origin cluster.

    sed -i -e "s/zookeeper/zookeeper_origin/g" /tmp/zookeeper_origin.properties
sed -i -e "s/kafka-logs/kafka-logs-origin/g" /tmp/server_origin.properties

    Start Zookeeper.

    bin/zookeeper-server-start /tmp/zookeeper_origin.properties

    Start Kafka.

    bin/kafka-server-start /tmp/server_origin.properties

  3. Challenge

    Create a Topic in the Source Cluster

    Create a topic named test-topic with 1 partition and a replication factor of 1.

    bin/kafka-topics --create --topic test-topic --replication-factor 1 --partitions 1 --zookeeper localhost:2171

  4. Challenge

    Run the Replicator Tool

    Run Kafka Connect in Standalone Mode and pass in the quickstart-replicator.properties file

    bin/connect-standalone etc/kafka/connect-standalone.properties etc/kafka-connect-replicator/quickstart-replicator.properties

  5. Challenge

    Produce and Verify Replication

    Verify that the topic was replicated to the destination cluster.

    bin/kafka-topics --describe --topic test-topic.replica --zookeeper localhost:2181

    Open a Console Producer and write to the topic test-topic in the source cluster.

    seq 10000 | bin/kafka-console-producer --topic test-topic --broker-list localhost:9082

    Confirm the messages were replicated by opening a console consumer to the destination cluster.

    bin/kafka-console-consumer --from-beginning --topic test-topic.replica --bootstrap-server localhost:9092
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