Apache Kafka Training and Certification

It will perform all Messaging operations like the publish-subscribe system.

Apache Kafka is an open source framework, used to build real-time data pipelines and streaming apps. It is fast, horizontally scalable, provides uninterrupted service to the companies to run the code in production frequently.  

Kafka consists of records, topics, consumers, producers, brokers, logs, partitions, and clusters. Records can have keys (optional), values, and timestamps. Kafka records are immutable. A Kafka Topic is a stream of records ("/orders", "/user-signups"). You can think of a topic as a feed name. A topic has a log which is the topic’s storage on disk. A topic log is broken up into partitions and segments. The Kafka Producer API is used to produce streams of data records. The Kafka Consumer API is used to consume a stream of records from Kafka. A broker is a Kafka server that runs in a Kafka cluster. Kafka brokers form a cluster. The Kafka cluster consists of many Kafka brokers on many servers. Broker sometimes refer to more of a logical system or as Kafka as a whole.

Kafka has great integration with big data analytics which is used for Real-time prediction in the field of Machine Learning and Big Data engineering. Considering the boom in Big data analytics, it is only natural that Kafka has reached the peak of its popularity.

Fault Tolerant, Durability, Zero Downtime, High Performance, and Replication.

Kafka's main architectural components include Producers, Topics, Consumers, Consumer Groups, Clusters, Brokers, Partitions, Replicas, Leaders, and Followers.

• Take care with topic configurations
• Use parallel processing
• Configure and isolate Kafka with security in mind
• Avoid outages by raising the Ulimit
• Maintain a low network latency
• Utilize effective monitoring and alerts
• Set log configuration parameters to keep logs manageable

Zookeeper is a centralized service and is used to maintain naming and configuration data and to provide flexible and robust synchronization within distributed systems. 

Kafka is a distributed system and uses Zookeeper to track status of Kafka cluster nodes. It also keeps track of Kafka topics, partitions, etc.

Kafka uses Zookeeper for the following:

• Electing a controller.
• Cluster membership.
• Topic configuration.

No, Kafka cannot be used without a zookeeper. Apache Kafka is a distributed system that uses Zookeeper to keep a track status of the Kafka cluster nodes. Along with Kafka cluster nodes, it keeps a track of Kafka topics, partitions, etc.

Apache Kafka is an open-source stream processing platform built by LinkedIn and written in Scala and Java programming languages. It was donated by LinkedIn to the Apache Software Foundation.

Scala and Java because of their nativity.

Topic is where data (messages) gets published by a producer and consumed by the consumer.

The popularity of Apache Kafka is exploding. The applications of Apache Kafka are as follows:  

•  Messaging
•  Activity Tracking
•  Metrics & Log Aggregation
•  Commit Log
•  Stream Processing

Kafka Producer API,Kafka Connect Source API,Kafka Streams API / KSQL,Kafka Consumer API,Kafka Connect Sink API.

Yes, Kafka is required for Big Data to make streaming more scalable. Kafka can be integrated with Spark Streaming, Flume to ingest huge amounts of data in Hadoop clusters.

Apache Kafka is an open-sourced,  stream-processing software platform that has been developed by LinkedIn and donated to the Apache Software Foundation. It is written in Java and Scala.

Most often, Kafka is used in building real-time streaming data architectures to provide real-time analytics to the users. Apache Kafka is used with Real-Time ingestion and Monitoring of application logs.

Real-time streaming data architectures to provide real-time analytics. Apache Kafka is robust, scalable, and highly reliable to capture real-time events. The use of Apache Kafka is growing exponentially. Here are some of the popular use cases where Apache Kafka is used:

• Kafka is used in Messaging to process large amounts of data  
• Kafka with the help of Apache Storm is used to handle big data pipeline
• Kafka is used for operational data monitoring which includes forming statistics from distributed applications and producing centralized feeds of operational data
• Kafka is used to processing huge amount of data in data pipelines

Kafka is most often used in streaming real-time data architectures to provide real-time analytics. Given below are some of the strong points explaining the benefits of Apache Kafka and why it is used worldwide:

• Kafka is able to handle high-velocity and high-volume data to pass thousands of messages per second by providing high-throughput.
• Kafka can handle a huge amount of messages with very low latency (milliseconds).
• Kafka includes durability feature that replicates the messages and messages are never lost.
• The distributed feature in Kafka makes it highly scalable and capable of replicating and partitioning the data.
• Kafka is resistant to machine failure that achieves fault-tolerant feature.
• The best bit about Kafka is that it is consumer friendly acting according to consumers needs.

Kafka is able to handle high-volume, high-velocity data, and support message throughput of thousands of messages per second. The other benefits of Apache Kafka are:

•   It acts as a buffer so your systems won’t crash
•   Reduces the need for multiple integrations
•   Low latency and high throughput

Companies that have used Kafka or using Kafka to build the applications are:

• New York Times,
• Pinterest,
• Trivago,
• Line,
• Rabobank

The various use-cases of Apache Kafka are:

• Messaging,
• Event streams,
• Tracking and logging,
• Infinitely scalable

.\bin\windows\kafka-server-start.bat .\config\server.properties

Apache Kafka needs following system requirements to run Apache Kafka:

• Windows Or Unix Or Mac,
• Java,
• 2GB RAM,
• 500GD Disk

ZooKeeper Installation:

1. Go to your Zookeeper config directory. For me its C:\zookeeper-3.4.7\conf
2. Rename file “zoo_sample.cfg” to “zoo.cfg”
3. Open zoo.cfg in any text editor, like Notepad; I prefer Notepad++.
4. Find and edit dataDir=/tmp/zookeeper to :\zookeeper-3.4.7\data  
5. Add an entry in the System Environment Variables as we did for Java.
6. Add ZOOKEEPER_HOME = C:\zookeeper-3.4.7 to the System Variables.
7. Edit the System Variable named “Path” and add ;%ZOOKEEPER_HOME%\bin;
8. You can change the default Zookeeper port in zoo.cfg file (Default port 2181).
9. Run ZooKeeper by opening a new cmd and type zkserver.
10. You will see the command prompt with some details, like the image below:

Setting Up Kafka:

1. Go to your Kafka config directory. For me its C:\kafka_2.11-0.9.0.0\config
2. Edit the file “server.properties.”
3. Find and edit the line log.dirs=/tmp/kafka-logs” to “log.dir= C:\kafka_2.11-0.9.0.0\kafka-logs.
4. If your ZooKeeper is running on some other machine or cluster you can edit “zookeeper.connect:2181” to your custom IP and port. For this demo, we are using the same machine so there's no need to change. Also the Kafka port and broker.id are configurable in this file. Leave other settings as is.
5. Your Kafka will run on default port 9092 and connect to Zookeeper’s default port, 2181.

Running a Kafka Server:

Important: Please ensure that your ZooKeeper instance is up and running before starting a Kafka server.

1. Go to your Kafka installation directory: C:\kafka_2.11-0.9.0.0\
2. Open a command prompt here by pressing Shift + right click and choose the “Open command window here” option).
3. Now type .\bin\windows\kafka-server-start.bat .\config\server.properties and press Enter.

.\bin\windows\kafka-server-start.bat .\config\server.properties

You can verify by starting zookeeper or by creating topics.

• kafka/bin/zookeeper-server-start.sh kafka/config/zookeeper.properties
• kafka/bin/kafka-server-start.sh kafka/config/server.properties
• kafka/bin/kafka-topics.sh --create --zookeeper localhost:2181 --replication-factor 1 --partitions 13 --topic my-topic

To learn Apache Kafka, you can read some books, tutorials, and you can take up a course. Any investments you have made in learning Apache Kafka will pay you rich returns. The Apache Kafka course will help you master all the tools that will make your resume more marketable. Enrol in this course to upgrade your skills. 

As a beginner, you can opt for online tutorials, videos, and blogs available online to learn Apache.

A few tutorials that you can opt for are:

• Learn Apache Kafka for Beginners
• Apache Kafka Series -  Learn Apache Kafka for Beginners
• Learn Apache Kafka for Beginners

After getting your basics cleared, you can always choose to opt for KnowledgeHut’s training

If you are a professional who is keen on learning Apache Kafka, then the following resources might help you do so:

Apache Kafka tutorials:

Getting Started with Apache Kafka

Apache Kafka Series - Learn Apache Kafka for Beginners

Apache Kafka Series - Kafka Streams for Data Processing

Apache Kafka Certification Training

Apache Kafka Series - Kafka Cluster Setup & Administration

Apache Kafka Books:

Kafka: The Definitive GuideLearning Apache KafkaApache Kafka CookbookBuilding Data Streaming Applications with Apache KafkaStreaming Architecture

You can become certified in Apache Kafka in by taking up certification course. Here is the list of the best training providers:

• Mind Majix
• Intellipaat
• KnowledgeHut
• Croma Campus

Most of the industry experts suggest taking up the Apache Kafka course at KnowledgeHut. It provides you with the best quality training that is hands-on and comprehensive. KnowledgeHut has one of the most detailed courses on Apache Kafka.

• Learn concepts from scratch, and advance your learning through step-by-step guidance on tools and techniques.
• You’ll get hands-on experience by building the real-world projects at the end of the course.

KnowledgeHut will provide the Apache Kafka certification which will help you master the complete architecture of Kafka and make you a successful Kafka Big Data Developer.

The certification provided for Apache Kafka by Knowledgehut is valid for lifetime.

We will provide complete practical knowledge in the form of topic end exercises and real time projects. These will give you the practical experience and knowledge that you need to clear job interviews. This will help a lot in landing a job as an Apache Kafka expert.

Being well versed in Apache Kafka can help you land jobs as a:

• Kafka Developers
• Kafka Testing Professional
• Big Data Architect in Kafka
• Kafka Project Manager

After completion of the course, you will learn the following:

• Kafka and its components
• Kafka cluster, along with its setup and installation
• Kafka operations and performance tuning
• Integrating Kafka with Storm and Hadoop
• Integrating Kafka with Spark

Today, many companies are using Apache Kafka which has raised the demand for Kafka experts in the industry. Currently, Apache Kafka is being used in real-time ingestion and it is predicted to use it as MicroServices integrated with Docker instance. Let us take a look at various points that will explain the future scope of Kafka professionals:

• Kafka is extremely popular among the prime companies like Twitter, LinkedIn, Netflix, Mozilla, Oracle, and many more.
• According to Indeed, the average salary for Apache  Kafka Architect ranges from approximately $94,661 per year for Senior Technical Lead to $141,535 per year for Software Architect.
• Kafka is used in numerous industries including business services, retail, finance, manufacturing, etc.

According to Payscale report, the average salary for a Kafka certified professional is $119k per annum.

Today, Apache Kafka is used in almost all industries including Finance, Retail, Technical, Telecommunications, Media & Internet, Healthcare, Education, Transportation, Insurance, etc. Fortune 500 companies and start-up companies like LinkedIn, Twitter, Netflix, Paypal, Uber, Airbnb, Cisco, Oracle, DataDog, LinkSmart, etc. are hiring Kafka developers so that they can apply their expertise in handling big volumes of data on the web.