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Welcome to this hands-on tutorial where you’ll learn how to manage topics, partitions, and brokers in Apache Kafka. By the end of this lesson, you’ll know how to create topics with custom partitions and replication, inspect topic metadata, and update topic configurations.

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1. Exploring the Kafka Installation

Begin by navigating to your Kafka home directory and listing its contents: 
cd /root/kafka/
ls -l
You should see: 
NOTICE  LICENSE  Licenses/  config/  bin/  site-docs/  libs/  logs/  kafka.log
All command-line utilities are located in bin/: 
cd bin/
ls -l
ScriptPurpose
kafka-topics.shCreate, list, and delete topics
kafka-console-producer.shPublish messages to a topic
kafka-console-consumer.shConsume messages from a topic
kafka-configs.shAlter configuration of brokers/topics
kafka-broker-api-versions.shList broker API versions

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2. Creating a Simple Topic

To create a topic named demo_topic, run: 
./kafka-topics.sh \
  --create \
  --topic demo_topic \
  --bootstrap-server localhost:9092
You may see a metrics warning, but the topic will be created successfully: 
Created topic demo_topic.
You can verify the new topic in the Kafdrop UI under Topics. By default, a new topic has 1 partition and a replication factor of 1.

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3. Creating a Partitioned and Replicated Topic

Partitions enable parallel message processing, while replication provides fault tolerance. In production, set partitions to match your consumer groups and replication factor to at least 2 or 3.
A low replication factor (e.g., 1) has no redundancy. If the single broker fails, data becomes unavailable.
Create a topic named partitioned_topic with 3 partitions and a replication factor of 1: 
./kafka-topics.sh \
  --create \
  --topic partitioned_topic \
  --partitions 3 \
  --replication-factor 1 \
  --bootstrap-server localhost:9092
Verify the topic settings in the Kafdrop UI:
The image shows a Kafdrop interface displaying a Kafka Cluster Overview, including details about brokers, topics, and partitions. It lists two brokers and two topics with their respective partition information.
Click on partitioned_topic to view leader assignments and replica distribution.

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4. Describing a Topic via CLI

To inspect partition details, use: 
./kafka-topics.sh \
  --describe \
  --topic partitioned_topic \
  --bootstrap-server localhost:9092
Sample output: 
Topic: partitioned_topic  PartitionCount: 3  ReplicationFactor: 1  Configs: segment.bytes=1073741824
  Partition: 0  Leader: 1  Replicas: 1  Isr: 1
  Partition: 1  Leader: 0  Replicas: 1  Isr: 0
  Partition: 2  Leader: 1  Replicas: 1  Isr: 1

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5. Altering Topic Configuration

Adjust the retention period for partitioned_topic to 48 hours (172,800,000 ms): 
./kafka-configs.sh \
  --bootstrap-server localhost:9092 \
  --entity-type topics \
  --entity-name partitioned_topic \
  --alter \
  --add-config retention.ms=172800000
You’ll see: 
Completed updating config for topic partitioned_topic.
Confirm the update in the Kafdrop UI:
The image shows a Kafdrop interface displaying details of a Kafka topic named "partitioned_topic," including an overview of partitions, configuration settings, and partition details.
Or re-run the describe command and verify Configs: retention.ms=172800000.

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6. Listing Brokers in the Cluster

To view the broker API versions and ensure your brokers are reachable: 
./kafka-broker-api-versions.sh \
  --bootstrap-server localhost:9092
This command lists supported Kafka API versions for each broker.
Next up: configuring producers and consumers for message publishing and consumption.

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