Enterprise Kafka: Control Without Bottlenecks
Enterprise Kafka management needs automated governance, not slow approval processes. Control multi-cluster environments without creating bottlenecks.
Feb 9, 2026Read →
AI for Kafka Operations
AI for Kafka operations makes context instantly available. Reduce MTTR from hours to minutes with natural-language diagnostics and MCP.
Feb 7, 2026Read →
Kafka Data Products: Beyond Topics
Kafka data products need contracts, ownership, SLAs, and discovery. Topics with documentation aren't data products—they're shared state.
Feb 3, 2026Read →
Safeguard Kafka from Timestamp-Based Data Loss
Producer timestamps can trigger immediate retention deletion. Configure timestamp validation, use LogAppendTime, or enforce bounds at the gateway level.
Feb 3, 2026Read →
Kafka Latency: Why Averages Lie
Kafka latency averages hide tail problems. Optimize p99, not p50, and measure end-to-end from producer commit to consumer processing.
Jan 30, 2026Read →
How Gateway Reduces Kafka DR from Hours to Minutes
Gateway eliminates Kafka DR coordination overhead. One API call switches all clients to the secondary cluster. Cut execution from hours to under a minute.
Jan 29, 2026Read →
Kafka DR: Why Replication Isn't the Hard Part
PagerDuty's 9-hour Kafka outage reveals the real DR problem - coordinating 47 services during crisis. Why replication alone won't save you.
Jan 27, 2026Read →
Kafka Policy Enforcement: Code Over Docs
Kafka policies in Confluence are suggestions. CEL-based enforcement at the API layer prevents bad configs before they reach production.
Jan 21, 2026Read →
Kafka Compliance: GDPR, SOC2, HIPAA, DORA
GDPR, SOC2, HIPAA, and DORA compliance for Kafka infrastructure. Generate audit evidence in minutes with continuous automated controls.
Jan 14, 2026Read →
Kafka Control Plane: API-Driven Management
Your Kafka data plane is fast and resilient. Your control plane—provisioning, access, config—probably runs on scripts and tribal knowledge.
Jan 6, 2026Read →
Kafka Audit Automation: Continuous Compliance
Manual Kafka audit prep is security theater. Automate compliance evidence generation so audits take days, not months of scrambling.
Dec 30, 2025Read →
Kafka Data Contracts: Prevent Breaking Changes
Data contracts prevent breaking changes in Kafka. Enforce schema compatibility, versioning, and migration rules before bad data ships.
Dec 23, 2025Read →
Kafka Alerting: Fix Alert Fatigue
Kafka alert fatigue is a design problem, not a sensitivity problem. Build tiered alerts where 95% of pages result in action, not silence.
Dec 16, 2025Read →
IBM's $11B Confluent Acquisition: What It Means for Kafka Users
Strategic analysis of IBM's Confluent acquisition. What changes for enterprise Kafka deployments and architecture decisions.
Dec 15, 2025Read →
Rolling Restarts Without Downtime
Zero-downtime Kafka rolling restarts. Pre-flight checks, ISR verification, controlled shutdown, and KRaft controller order.
Dec 10, 2025Read →
Kafka Costs: Stop Overpaying by 30-50%
Teams overpay for Kafka 30-50% through over-provisioning and topic sprawl. Measure per-team usage and right-size clusters to cut costs.
Dec 9, 2025Read →
Testing Kafka Applications: Testcontainers, Embedded Kafka, and Mocks
Choose the right Kafka testing strategy. Testcontainers for integration tests, MockProducer for unit tests, TopologyTestDriver for Streams.
Dec 9, 2025Read →
Consumer Lag Alerts: Setting Thresholds That Don't Cry Wolf
Stop alert fatigue from consumer lag metrics. Offset vs time-based lag, per-workload thresholds, and rate-of-change detection.
Dec 8, 2025Read →
Kafka Data Sharing Across Teams
Cross-team Kafka data sharing should be as simple as an API call. Discovery catalogs and approval workflows replace Slack-driven access requests.
Dec 2, 2025Read →
Why Enterprise AI Projects Stall on Data Access, Not Models
Enterprise AI fails due to data access bottlenecks, multi-hop pipelines, and late governance. SMBC, Marsh McLennan leaders share real-world solutions.
Dec 1, 2025Read →
Kafka Encryption: Transit, Rest, End-to-End
Kafka encryption has three layers: TLS in transit, disk encryption at rest, end-to-end for payload protection. Match each to your threat model.
Nov 25, 2025Read →
Kafka Tiered Storage: Infinite Retention Without Infinite Disks
Configure Kafka tiered storage with S3 to reduce storage costs 3-9x. Broker config, common errors, and performance tradeoffs.
Nov 21, 2025Read →
Kafka Automation Platform
Kafka automation replaces ticket-based provisioning with policy-based self-service. Cut provisioning tickets 75% and deploy 4x faster.
Nov 18, 2025Read →
Kafka Multi-Cloud: AWS, Azure, and GCP
Multi-cloud Kafka across AWS, Azure, and GCP needs unified management. One control plane for visibility, policies, and operations everywhere.
Nov 9, 2025Read →
Stop Over-Partitioning: You Don't Need 100 Partitions
Over-partitioned Kafka topics waste memory, slow failovers, and complicate rebalancing. The actual formula for right-sizing partitions based on throughput.
Nov 8, 2025Read →
Kafka's Real Problem Is Governance, Not Speed
Most Kafka clusters push less than 1MB/s. The challenge isn't throughput—it's building the control plane that makes streaming usable at enterprise scale.
Nov 6, 2025Read →
Why Every Streaming Vendor Is Building a Kafka Proxy
Streaming proxies enable governed self-service and AI-ready data at scale. Why Kafka control planes from Confluent, Kong, and Conduktor are converging.
Nov 5, 2025Read →
Governed Kafka Self-Service
Self-service Kafka without governance is chaos. Policy-based automation gives developers autonomy while enforcing organizational standards.
Nov 2, 2025Read →
Kafka Offset Management: How Consumer Groups Track Progress
Understand Kafka offset commits, auto-commit pitfalls, CommitFailedException, and offset reset behavior. Stop losing messages.
Nov 1, 2025Read →
Kafka Access Management: Fix ACL Sprawl
Kafka ACL sprawl makes permissions unknowable. Application-based access with periodic reviews replaces manual ACL-per-service-account chaos.
Oct 28, 2025Read →
5 Sessions Worth Your Time at Current New Orleans 2025
Current New Orleans 2025 highlights: OpenAI's StreamLink, Kafka protocol deep-dive, Notion's event stack, KIP-1163 diskless topics, and JPMorgan's strat...
Oct 27, 2025Read →
Kafka Security: Access Control That Scales
Kafka security goes beyond TLS encryption. Scalable access control, ACL management, and provable permissions for production environments.
Oct 21, 2025Read →
Kafka Exactly-Once: When It Works and When It Doesn't
Kafka's exactly-once works within cluster boundaries. Idempotent producers, transactions, and the hard limits you need to understand.
Oct 15, 2025Read →
Kafka Security Best Practices
Kafka security best practices fail without enforcement. Automate TLS, ACLs, and encryption policies so compliance is built-in, not bolted-on.
Oct 14, 2025Read →
Kafka Proxy: Beyond ACLs for Governance
Kafka proxies enforce field-level filtering, data masking, and rate limiting that native ACLs can't. Apply governance at the wire level.
Oct 5, 2025Read →
Kafka Governance: Guardrails Over Guidelines
Kafka governance fails when policies live in wikis instead of code. Automated guardrails prevent incidents before they reach production.
Sep 27, 2025Read →
Kafka Cluster Management: Beyond SSH
Managing 10+ Kafka clusters via SSH and scripts wastes senior engineering time. Centralized tooling gives visibility and control at scale.
Sep 19, 2025Read →
Kafka Monitoring: 10 Metrics That Matter
Stop drowning in 200+ Kafka broker metrics. Focus on the 10 signals that actually predict outages, consumer lag, and cluster instability.
Sep 12, 2025Read →
Kafka as a Database: When to Use Compacted Topics for State
Use Kafka compacted topics as a lightweight state store. Log compaction configuration, query limitations, and when to choose a real database instead.
Sep 10, 2025Read →
Kafka Observability: Beyond Monitoring
Kafka monitoring shows what's broken. Observability shows why. Combine metrics, traces, and context to diagnose root causes in minutes.
Sep 5, 2025Read →
Kafka Testing: Beyond Production
Kafka testing means validating schemas, configs, and consumer logic before production. Build confidence with contract tests and local clusters.
Aug 29, 2025Read →
Kafka Data Quality: Enforce at Write Time
Enforce Kafka data quality at write time with schema validation and policies. Garbage in at the producer means garbage out everywhere.
Aug 26, 2025Read →
Transactional Outbox: Database-Kafka Consistency
Solve the dual-write problem with the transactional outbox pattern. PostgreSQL setup, Debezium CDC, and idempotent consumers.
Aug 25, 2025Read →
Kafka Performance: Measure Before You Tune
Kafka performance is 80% understanding your workload, 20% tuning configs. Measure bottlenecks before changing partition counts or batch sizes.
Aug 19, 2025Read →
Custom Partitioners: When Default Hashing Isn't Enough
Build custom Kafka partitioners for geographic routing, priority lanes, and hot key distribution. Java implementation with production-tested patterns.
Aug 13, 2025Read →
The Real Problems with Apache Kafka: 10,000 Forum Posts Analyzed
10,000+ Kafka forum posts reveal the truth: connector crashes, auth nightmares, schema failures, and cryptic errors plague production deployments.
Aug 11, 2025Read →
Why Operational and Analytical Teams Can't Share Data
Operational and analytical teams use different tools, see different data. Bridge the divide with Kafka + Conduktor for AI, compliance, and insights.
Aug 1, 2025Read →
Escaping Vendor Lock-In: Kafka Portability Strategies
Avoid Kafka vendor lock-in with portable configurations and abstraction layers. Code examples for MSK, Confluent, and self-managed.
Jul 8, 2025Read →
Broker Won't Start: Common Kafka Startup Failures
Kafka broker startup failures with real error messages and fixes. Cluster ID mismatch, port conflicts, disk issues, and config errors.
Jun 19, 2025Read →
Kafka Network Partitions and Split-Brain Failures
Understand Kafka network partition failures, split-brain scenarios, and unclean leader election. ISR shrinkage and data loss prevention.
Jun 13, 2025Read →
Strimzi on Kubernetes: From Zero to Production Kafka
Deploy production-grade Kafka on Kubernetes with Strimzi. Separate node pools, KRaft mode, and the configuration choices that matter.
Apr 19, 2025Read →
Real-Time Kafka Data Is Your AI Competitive Advantage
Real-time, trusted data is the new AI advantage. Discover why the future belongs to companies that treat data as a product, not a by-product.
Apr 15, 2025Read →
Streaming at Scale: Don't Let Data Chaos Derail Your Growth
Scale streaming data with governance and quality controls. Shift left to prevent bad data, ensure AI success, and avoid architectural chaos.
Mar 27, 2025Read →
Kafka and Flink Are the Infrastructure for AI Agents
AI agents need real-time context to act autonomously. Discover how Kafka + Flink power adaptive, intelligent systems at Netflix and beyond.
Mar 25, 2025Read →
Audit Logging in Kafka: Who Did What and When
Configure Kafka audit logging for SOC2, HIPAA, and PCI-DSS compliance. Authorizer logging and forensic analysis techniques.
Mar 24, 2025Read →
80% of Enterprise Data Sits Unused. Real-Time Activation Changes That.
Most enterprise data never drives a decision. Real-time data activation transforms idle data into competitive advantage.
Mar 21, 2025Read →
Avro Schema Evolution: Compatibility Guide
Master Avro schema evolution with BACKWARD vs FORWARD compatibility modes. Compatibility matrix, curl commands for Schema Registry, and what breaks.
Mar 15, 2025Read →
Real-Time AI Requires Kafka and Guardrails
Discover how Kafka and Flink power real-time AI agents, enabling autonomous decision-making, adaptive intelligence, and scalable data streaming.
Mar 14, 2025Read →
Dead Letter Topics: Handling Poison Pills
Implement Kafka dead letter queues to isolate poison pill messages. Java error handling patterns, retry strategies, DLT monitoring, and reprocessing wor...
Feb 23, 2025Read →
Kafka Isn't a Queue: Stop Designing It Like One
Kafka's commit log differs fundamentally from message queues. The mental model shift that prevents costly anti-patterns.
Feb 21, 2025Read →
Your First Kafka Producer: Python, Java, and Go Examples
Build your first Kafka producer in Python, Java, and Go. Working code examples, common connection errors, and essential configuration for reliable messa...
Jan 28, 2025Read →
Stop Building Kafka Encryption Libraries
Client-side encryption creates ungovernable sprawl. Proxy-layer encryption centralizes control and makes Kafka a dumb pipe.
Jan 25, 2025Read →
JVM Tuning for Kafka Brokers: G1GC vs ZGC in Production
Configure G1GC and ZGC for Kafka brokers. Heap sizing, pause time targets, and when to switch collectors in production.
Dec 10, 2024Read →
Kafka Headers: Metadata Without Polluting Your Payload
Use Kafka headers for distributed tracing, content-based routing, and audit metadata without modifying payloads. Java and Python code examples included.
Oct 10, 2024Read →
Kafka Team Structure: Platform Team vs Embedded Model
Platform teams centralize expertise but bottleneck delivery. Embedded engineers move fast but create chaos. Here's how to choose.
Oct 3, 2024Read →
Field-Level Encryption in Kafka: Beyond TLS
TLS protects data in transit, but brokers still see plaintext. Field-level encryption protects PII at rest and enables crypto shredding.
Sep 7, 2024Read →
Kafka Streams vs ksqlDB: Choosing Right
Choose between Kafka Streams and ksqlDB for stream processing. Use case comparison, team skills assessment, deployment models, and operational trade-offs.
Sep 2, 2024Read →
Field-Level Encryption in Kafka Without Code Changes Using Conduktor Gateway
Zero-code Kafka encryption: field-level encryption/decryption with Conduktor Gateway—secure PII, role-based access, no application changes required.
Aug 28, 2024Read →
Query Kafka Topics with SQL: Stop Duplicating Your Data
Query Kafka topics with SQL using PostgreSQL endpoints, Iceberg, and Parquet—eliminating data duplication for analytics and AI/ML pipelines.
Aug 14, 2024Read →
KRaft Explained: Kafka Without ZooKeeper
How KRaft replaces ZooKeeper in Kafka 4.0. Controller quorum architecture, broker configuration examples, and step-by-step migration from ZooKeeper.
Jul 27, 2024Read →
Kafka Topic Naming Conventions That Scale
Build a Kafka topic naming convention that scales. Structural patterns, ACL alignment, and common mistakes that break governance.
Jul 13, 2024Read →
Schema Registry Isn't Optional
The "we'll add it later" approach costs weeks of debugging and painful migrations. Schema Registry is day-one infrastructure.
Jul 13, 2024Read →
Event sourcing with Kafka: patterns and pitfalls
Build event-sourced systems on Kafka. Topic design, aggregate reconstruction, CQRS projections, and the gotchas that break production.
Jul 3, 2024Read →
PagerDuty's Kafka Outage: Lessons from 4.2 Million Rogue Producers
A code pattern created 4.2M Kafka producers per hour, crashed the cluster, and silenced alerts for 9+ hours. Dissecting the postmortem.
Jun 28, 2024Read →
When NOT to Use Kafka: 5 Scenarios Where Simpler Wins
Kafka adds complexity you may not need. Five scenarios where PostgreSQL LISTEN/NOTIFY, Redis Streams, SQS, or simple webhooks outperform Kafka.
May 21, 2024Read →
Kafka Retention: When Messages Disappear and Why
Master Kafka retention—retention.ms, segment.ms, and why messages persist longer than expected. Debug commands included.
May 6, 2024Read →
Build Idempotent Kafka Consumers: Patterns That Actually Work
Handle duplicate Kafka messages gracefully. Database constraints, Redis lookups, and the deduplication patterns that scale.
Apr 26, 2024Read →
GDPR and Kafka: Right to Erasure
Handle GDPR Article 17 deletion requests in Kafka's append-only log. Crypto shredding implementation, tombstone patterns, and compliant retention strate...
Apr 24, 2024Read →
What Kafka Users Actually Care About in 2024: Kafka Summit London Recap
Kafka Summit London 2024 highlights: real-time analytics, GitOps self-service, SQL over Kafka, and the shift from batch to streaming data.
Mar 29, 2024Read →
You Probably Don't Need Kafka's Exactly-Once Semantics
Kafka's exactly-once adds latency and complexity. Most applications work better with at-least-once and idempotent consumers.
Mar 23, 2024Read →
Partition Count: The Decision You Can't Undo
How to choose Kafka partition count. Sizing formulas, overhead costs, and why decreasing partitions requires topic migration.
Mar 1, 2024Read →
Conduktor and Confluent Kafka Meetups Across the USA, February 2024
Join Conduktor's February 2024 USA tour in NYC, Boston, Bay Area, and Seattle. Learn about Kafka poison pills, schema compatibility, and data contracts.
Feb 8, 2024Read →
Kafka Platform: Build vs Buy Decision Framework
Framework for evaluating self-managed Kafka vs managed services like Confluent Cloud and MSK. TCO analysis, team skills assessment, and decision criteria.
Jan 26, 2024Read →
Disk Full: Emergency Recovery When Kafka Runs Out of Space
Emergency runbook for Kafka disk full scenarios. Immediate triage commands, safe segment deletion, recovery steps, and retention tuning to prevent recur...
Jan 17, 2024Read →
Tag Your Data Infrastructure or Drown in Chaos
Transform data chaos with strategic tagging. Enable Data Mesh, ABAC security, and better analytics through hierarchical metadata organization.
Jan 16, 2024Read →
Multi-Region Kafka: Active-Active vs Active-Passive
Compare Kafka DR patterns. MirrorMaker 2 setup, offset translation, conflict resolution, and when each architecture makes sense.
Jan 11, 2024Read →
SOC2 Type II Certification: One Year of Writing Policies and Proving We Follow Them
SOC2 Type II journey: policies, pentesting, CVE management, agent monitoring, and compliance automation with Drata—lessons from Conduktor's certification.
Jan 2, 2024Read →
Real-Time SQL on Kafka with PySpark
Run real-time SQL queries on Kafka with PySpark. Stream processing tutorial with JSON transformations, ChatGPT integration, and data generation.
Sep 17, 2023Read →
Why Conduktor Uses Redpanda for Local Kafka Development
Conduktor uses Redpanda for local development because it starts instantly, weighs 130MB, includes Schema Registry, and eliminates ZooKeeper complexity.
Aug 10, 2023Read →
Conduktor Now Available on AWS Marketplace for MSK Users
Deploy Conduktor on AWS Marketplace for MSK with IAM, Glue Schema Registry support, and seamless ECS/EKS integration in minutes.
Aug 2, 2023Read →
5 Kafka Configuration Mistakes That Kill Performance and How to Fix Them
Master Kafka performance: partition sizing, SerDe optimization, dual-write solutions, tombstones, and producer tuning for robust applications.
Jul 26, 2023Read →
What Kafka Users Actually Asked Us at Kafka Summit London 2023
Field-level encryption, multi-tenancy, topic-as-a-service, and RBAC dominated conversations at our booth. Here's what the community cares about most.
May 25, 2023Read →
Data Mesh Explained: Decentralized Data Ownership for Scalable Organizations
Data mesh decentralizes ownership for agility and scale. Learn core principles, architecture, and how Kafka + Conduktor enable domain-driven data products.
May 4, 2023Read →
RBAC vs ACLs in Apache Kafka: Choosing the Right Access Control Strategy
Implement RBAC and ACLs in Apache Kafka for secure access control. Compare network barriers, role-based permissions, and control plane integration.
Apr 8, 2023Read →
Data Integration: How Merging Datasets Drives Better Business Decisions
Master data integration for big data success. Explore ETL vs ELT processes, data quality benefits, and automation strategies for business intelligence.
Mar 9, 2023Read →
Change Data Capture Explained: How CDC Streams Database Changes in Real-Time
Change Data Capture (CDC) explained: real-time database replication, log-based streaming, push vs. pull methods, and Kafka CDC implementation patterns.
Mar 9, 2023Read →
Automate Kafka Topic Governance with Topic as a Service
Automate Kafka topic governance and ACL management with Topic as a Service—eliminate bottlenecks, enforce standards, free your ops team.
Jan 31, 2023Read →
Schema Registry Prevents Data Chaos in Kafka. Here's How It Works.
Schema Registry prevents Kafka data chaos. Learn serialization, schema evolution, compatibility checks, and Aiven Karapace setup with Conduktor.
Nov 24, 2022Read →