Kafka Connect Auto Restart

Kafka Connect Auto Restart

Introducing Kafka Connect Auto-Restart in Kadeck. To make life easier for infrastructure and operations teams running Kafka Connect connectors and to ensure higher uptime, it is now possible to have Kadeck automatically restart crashed Kafka Connect connectors. This feature is part of a free update to the Kadeck Teams Enterprise package.

Users configure restart attempts and a grace period between restarts. Kadeck monitors the Kafka Connect connectors and restarts crashed tasks accordingly. Each restart is logged in the audit log This guide shows setup and usage.

Setting up Kafka Connect Auto-Restart

  1. Navigate to the Kafka Connect page: Select the connector to enable auto-restart for.
  2. Click on Auto-Restart: Specify number of restarts and grace period for the connector.
  3. Click on “Enable”.

Process

If a Kafka Connect Connector instance monitored by the auto-restart feature fails, Kadeck restarts it as soon as it is detected.

The check occurs every 60 seconds by default, but can be customized in the settings. Depending on the number of checks and latency, a run may take longer than the configured interval.

If a crashed Kafka Connect Connector instance is detected, a restart is attempted. This will start a Grace Period countdown. After the Grace Period expires, the next restart is attempted until the maximum number of restart attempts is reached.

During a restart, the connector changes to the "Restart attempt" status. Each restart is logged in the audit log with error information.

If the last restart attempt fails, a CRITICAL log is issued and the Connector changes to the "Persistent Failure" state. A restart is no longer attempted.

The connector is still checked and the status is reset as soon as all tasks could be started correctly (manually) again.

Settings

The monitoring interval can be set by an administrator in the settings via the entry Kafka Connect Auto-Restart Interval. By default, the setting is set to 60s.

The check is executed by different Kadeck nodes in round-robin mode in Kadeck cluster operation.

Audit

  • Audit logs are created for each restart including the error trace.

Rights

KafkaConnectManage rights are needed to configure auto-restarts.

    • Related Articles

    • Kafka Connect Rights Management

      To view or manage Kafka Connect connectors or task, the user must have both the KafkaConnectView right and the KafkaConnectManage right. KafkaConnectView and KafkaConnectManage can be assigned for individual connections/environments. Example rights: ...

    • Connect to Confluent Cloud

      Kadeck works perfectly together with Confluent Cloud’s Apache Kafka clusters and other Kafka components, such as Schema Registry. We have published an article on our blog that will walk you through the necessary steps to create a connection to ...

    • Connect to Aiven

      Kadeck is compatible with all Apache Kafka cloud providers, including Aiven. Aiven is a well-known cloud data platform that provides managed services for several popular open-source technologies, including PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch, and Apache Kafka. ...

    • Connect to Amazon MSK

      This article describes how to connect Kadeck Teams and Kadeck Desktop to Amazon MSK. Important note: Connecting to Amazon MSK with Kadeck Teams is straight forward if Kadeck Teams is deployed inside the same VPC (e.g., as EC2 or ECS instance). Learn ...

    • Connect to Digital Ocean

      This guide walks you through the steps to connect to a Kafka cluster on DigitalOcean using Kadeck. By following these instructions, you'll be able to set up a secure connection to your Kafka cluster and start managing your topics seamlessly. ...