Podcast

Kafka Disaster Recovery: Why It Fails in Practice

Replication is not the hardest part of Kafka disaster recovery. The operational complexity is. Learn why DR breaks down and how to make recovery predictable.

March 16, 2026 Watch Now

Speakers

Andy Allison VP of Product

Christoph Schubert Head of Sales Engineering Conduktor

Most Kafka teams believe they have disaster recovery covered. Replication is running, a backup cluster exists, and there is a runbook somewhere.

But when a real incident happens, recovery often takes hours. In this session, Andy Allison and Christoph Schubert discuss why Kafka DR often breaks down in practice and what teams can do to make recovery predictable and repeatable.

What You'll Learn

Why replication alone does not solve Kafka disaster recovery
The operational challenges behind Kafka failover
Common DR failure modes such as configuration drift and client coordination
How platform teams structure DR to recover in minutes instead of hours
Practical ways to evaluate your current Kafka DR strategy