Charmed Apache Kafka documentation¶

Charmed Apache Kafka is an open-source operator, packaged as a Juju charm, that simplifies the deployment, scaling, and management of Apache Kafka clusters on physical hardware, VMs, and cloud environments including AWS, Azure, OpenStack, and VMware.

Note

This is an IAAS/VM charmed operator. To deploy on Kubernetes, see Charmed Apache Kafka K8s operator.

The charm automates Apache Kafka operations from Day 0 to Day 2 with capabilities such as replication, TLS encryption, password rotation, application integration, and monitoring.

In this documentation¶


Getting started	Introduction • Environment setup • Requirements
Deployment	Deploy • Juju CLI • Terraform • AWS • Azure • Juju Spaces
Operations	Connections management • Unit management • Monitoring • Listeners • Statuses
Maintenance	Version upgrade • Migration • Replication • MirrorMaker • Backups
Security	Overview • Enable encryption • mTLS • OAuth • Cryptography
Extensions	Kafka Connect • Schema registry • Kafka UI
Internals	Snap commands • File paths • Performance tuning • Terraform module • Release notes

How the documentation is organised¶

This documentation uses the Diátaxis documentation structure:

The Tutorial walks you through deploying your first Charmed Apache Kafka cluster from scratch, step by step.
How-to guides help you solve specific operational tasks such as enabling TLS, connecting clients, or scaling brokers.
Reference lets you look up configuration options, status codes, file paths, and system requirements.
Explanation helps you understand the design decisions behind security, replication, and integration architecture.

Project and community¶

Charmed Apache Kafka is part of the Juju ecosystem of open-source, self-driving deployment tools. It can be integrated with multiple other Juju charms, also available on Charmhub.

It’s an open-source project developed and supported by Canonical that welcomes community contributions, suggestions, fixes and constructive feedback.

Read our Code of Conduct
Join the Discourse forum
Contribute and report issues
Explore Canonical’s open-source data platform
Contact us for all further questions

License and trademarks¶

Apache Kafka is a free, open-source software project by the Apache Software Foundation. Apache®, Apache Kafka, Kafka®, and the Apache Kafka logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of the Apache Software Foundation in the United States and/or other countries.

The Charmed Apache Kafka Operator is free software, distributed under the Apache Software License, version 2.0. See LICENSE for more information.