CODEWITHSUNDEEP
apache-kafka
Lavan Kumar
Lavan Kumar

Reputation: 1

Apache Kafka patch release process

How Kafka will release the patch updates?

How users will get to know Kafka patch updates?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 474

Answers (1)

JavaTechnical
JavaTechnical

Reputation: 9357

Kafka is typically available as a zip/tar that contains the binary files which we will use to start/stop/manage Kafka. You may want to:

  1. Subscribe to https://kafka.apache.org/downloads by generating a feed for it.
  2. Subscribe to any feeds that give you updates
  3. Write a script that checks for new kafka releases https://downloads.apache.org/kafka/ periodically to notify or download.

The Kafka versioning format typically is major.minor.patch release.

Every time, there is a new Kafka release, we need to download the latest zip, use the old configuration files (make changes if required) and start Kafka using new binaries. The upgrade process is fully documented in the Upgrading section at https://kafka.apache.org/documentation

For production environments, we have several options:

1. Using Managed Kafka Service (like in AWS, Azure, Confluent etc)

In this case, we need not worry about patching and security updates to Kafka because it is taken care by the service provider itself. For AWS, you will typically get notifications in the Console regarding when your Kafka update is scheduled.

It is easy to get started to use Managed Kafka service for production environments.

2. Using self-hosted kafka in Kubernetes (eg, using Strimzi)

If you are running Kafka in Kubernetes environment, you can use Strimzi operator and helm upgrade to update to the version you require. You need to update helm chart info from repository using helm repo update.

Managed services and Kubernetes operators make managing easy, however, manually managing Kafka clusters is relatively difficult.

Upvotes: 2

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