Apache Kafka, start to finish.

Apache Kafka in Action: From basics to production guides you through the concepts and skills you’ll need to deploy and administer Kafka for data pipelines, event-driven applications, and other systems that process data streams from multiple sources. Authors Anatoly Zelenin and Alexander Kropp have spent years using Kafka in real-world production environments. In this guide, they reveal their hard-won expert insights to help you avoid common Kafka pitfalls and challenges.

Inside Apache Kafka in Action you’ll discover:

• Apache Kafka from the ground up
• Achieving reliability and performance
• Troubleshooting Kafka systems
• Operations, governance, and monitoring
• Kafka use cases, patterns, and anti-patterns

Clear, concise, and practical, Apache Kafka in Action is written for IT operators, software engineers, and IT architects working with Kafka every day. Chapter by chapter, it guides you through the skills you need to deliver and maintain reliable and fault-tolerant data-driven applications.

Foreword by Adam Bellemare.

Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF and ePub formats from Manning Publications.

About the technology

Apache Kafka is the gold standard streaming data platform for real-time analytics, event sourcing, and stream processing. Acting as a central hub for distributed data, it enables seamless flow between producers and consumers via a publish-subscribe model. Kafka easily handles millions of events per second, and its rock-solid design ensures high fault tolerance and smooth scalability.

About the book

Apache Kafka in Action is a practical guide for IT professionals who are integrating Kafka into data-intensive applications and infrastructures. The book covers everything from Kafka fundamentals to advanced operations, with interesting visuals and real-world examples. Readers will learn to set up Kafka clusters, produce and consume messages, handle real-time streaming, and integrate Kafka into enterprise systems. This easy-to-follow book emphasizes building reliable Kafka applications and taking advantage of its distributed architecture for scalability and resilience.

What's inside

• Master Kafka’s distributed streaming capabilities
• Implement real-time data solutions
• Integrate Kafka into enterprise environments
• Build and manage Kafka applications
• Achieve fault tolerance and scalability

About the reader

For IT operators, software architects and developers. No experience with Kafka required.

About the author

Anatoly Zelenin is a Kafka expert known for workshops across Europe, especially in banking and manufacturing. Alexander Kropp specializes in Kafka and Kubernetes, contributing to cloud platform design and monitoring.

Table of Contents

Part 1
1 Introduction to Apache Kafka
2 First steps with Kafka
Part 2
3 Exploring Kafka topics and messages
4 Kafka as a distributed log
5 Reliability
6 Performance
Part 3
7 Cluster management
8 Producing and persisting messages
9 Consuming messages
10 Cleaning up messages
Part 4
11 Integrating external systems with Kafka Connect
12 Stream processing
13 Governance
14 Kafka reference architecture
15 Kafka monitoring and alerting16 Disaster management
17 Comparison with other technologies
18 Kafka’s role in modern enterprise architectures
Appendixes
A Setting up a Kafka test environment
B Monitoring setup