Web Hosting Apache Kafka

Apache Kafka’s primary use case is as a distributed data stream platform that supports real-time event processing. Its four key APIs – Producer, Consumer, Streams and Connect – help developers create microservices or applications which process streams of events with decoupled architecture in near real time.

Key features of its architecture are low latency (as low as 2 milliseconds) and scalability by decoupling data streams, durable message storage by partitioning topics into multiple partitions, intra-cluster replication capabilities, and decoupled data streams.

As well, its message queue allows for multi-subscriber compatibility compared to traditional queues that only support one publisher, while its fault tolerance stems from its cluster architecture with multiple servers (called brokers ) continuously monitoring each other for any issues and keeping the system operating even if one or more fail.

Kafka brokers communicate via a shared log known as the topic log, recording events as they occur. Each topic log is divided into multiple partitions with each partition managed by its own broker – designated leader for handling client requests for that topic or partition, read/write operations, maintaining list of brokers in cluster, leader election processes for individual partitions etc. Additionally, ZooKeeper acts as a distributed time server providing accurate timestamps of activities in system.