Charmed Apache Kafka K8s documentation

Charmed Apache Kafka K8s is an open-source operator, packaged as a Juju charm, that simplifies the deployment, scaling, and management of Apache Kafka clusters on Kubernetes including AKS, EKS, and custom K8s environments.

Note

This is a Kubernetes operator. To deploy on IAAS/VM, see Charmed Apache Kafka 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 • AKS • EKS
Operations	Connections management • Unit management • Monitoring • Listeners • Statuses
Maintenance	Version upgrade • Migration • Replication • MirrorMaker • Backups
Security	Overview • Enable encryption • mTLS • Cryptography
Extensions	Kafka Connect • Schema registry • Kafka UI
Internals	File paths • External K8s connection • 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 K8s 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 K8s 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 K8s Operator is free software, distributed under the Apache Software License, version 2.0. See LICENSE for more information.