Kafka Reliability Testing

Reliability testing in Kafka involves three key layers:

1. Configuration validation
2. Application validation
3. Production monitoring

Configuration Testing Tools

• VerifiableProducer: Produces numbered sequence messages
• VerifiableConsumer: Validates message sequence and reports gaps
• Trogdor: Kafka's fault injection framework

Key Test Scenarios

1. Leader Elections

   • Kill leader broker
   • Measure recovery time
   • Verify no message loss

2. Broker Failures

   • Rolling restarts
   • Disk failures
   • Network partitions

3. Client Resilience

   • Network latency
   • Broker unavailability
   • Rebalance handling

References

Flashcards

What are the three layers of Kafka reliability testing?:: Configuration validation, application validation, and production monitoring

What tools does Kafka provide for reliability testing?:: VerifiableProducer, VerifiableConsumer, and Trogdor fault injection framework

What happens when a broker loses its ZooKeeper connection?:: Its ephemeral node is automatically removed but broker ID remains in other data structures