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Creating a Kafka Cluster with Confluent

With this hands-on lab, we will have the opportunity to install and configure a three-broker cluster using Confluent Community. We will start with three regular Ubuntu servers and build a working Kafka cluster. Kafka is a powerful tool for messaging and data stream processing. On top of this, Confluent offers additional features and immensely simplifies some aspects of the installation process for Kafka.

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Lab Info
Level
Intermediate
Last updated
Sep 25, 2025
Duration
30m

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Table of Contents
  1. Challenge

    Install the Confluent Community Package on the Broker Nodes
    1. On all three nodes, add the GNU Privacy Guard (GPG) key plus package repository, and then install Confluent Community, plus Java. The format should look like this:
    wget -qO - https://packages.confluent.io/deb/5.2/archive.key | sudo apt-key add -
    
    sudo add-apt-repository "deb [arch=amd64] https://packages.confluent.io/deb/5.2 stable main"
    
    sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y openjdk-8-jre-headless confluent-community-2.12
    
  2. Challenge

    Configure Zookeeper
    1. On all three nodes, edit the hosts file:
    sudo vi /etc/hosts
    
    1. Add the following entries to the hosts file:
    10.0.1.101 zoo1
    10.0.1.102 zoo2
    10.0.1.103 zoo3
    
    1. Edit the zookeeper config file:
    sudo vi /etc/kafka/zookeeper.properties
    
    1. Delete the contents of the config file and add the following:
    tickTime=2000
    dataDir=/var/lib/zookeeper/
    clientPort=2181
    initLimit=5
    syncLimit=2
    server.1=zoo1:2888:3888
    server.2=zoo2:2888:3888
    server.3=zoo3:2888:3888
    autopurge.snapRetainCount=3
    autopurge.purgeInterval=24
    
    1. Set up the zookeeper ID for each server:
    sudo vi /var/lib/zookeeper/myid
    
    1. On each server, set the contents of /var/lib/zookeeper/myid to the server's ID. On Node 1, enter 1, on Node 2, enter 2, and lastly on Node 3, enter 3:
    <server id 1, 2, or 3>
    
  3. Challenge

    Configure Kafka
    1. Edit the kafka config file:
    sudo vi /etc/kafka/server.properties
    
    1. Edit the broker.id and zookeeper.connect in the config file. Set the broker ID to the appropriate ID for each server (1 on Node 1, 2 on Node 2, and so on).

    2. Set zookeeper.connect to zoo1:2181:

    broker.id=<server id 1, 2, or 3>
    ...
    zookeeper.connect=zoo1:2181
    
  4. Challenge

    Start Zookeeper and Kafka
    1. Start and enable the Zookeeper and Kafka services:
    sudo systemctl start confluent-zookeeper
    sudo systemctl enable confluent-zookeeper
    sudo systemctl start confluent-kafka
    sudo systemctl enable confluent-kafka
    
    1. Both services should be active (running) on all three servers. Check the services to make sure they are running:
    sudo systemctl status confluent*
    
    1. We can test our cluster by listing the current topics:
    kafka-topics --list --bootstrap-server localhost:9092
    

    The output should look like this:

    _confluent.support.metrics
    
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