Installing and running Kafka on servers, containers and Kubernetes: KRaft bootstrapping, the official images, hardware, OS and JVM settings, node pools, OpenShift, restricted networks and multi-site layouts.
Standing up Kafka 4 from scratch: generating a cluster ID, formatting controllers with kafka-storage as standalone or with initial controllers, controller.quorum.bootstrap.servers, formatting brokers and verifying the quorum.
Using apache/kafka images beyond a laptop: pinning version tags, configuration through environment variables, persistent volumes for log and metadata directories, listener and advertised listener settings, and why the native image is not for production.
Sizing broker and controller hosts: memory for page cache with the 30-second buffering rule of thumb, disk throughput as the usual bottleneck, separate data drives, network for replication and how many controllers to run.
OS settings that matter for Kafka: file descriptor limits, vm.max_map_count for many partitions, XFS versus EXT4 and their mount options, noatime, socket buffers for WAN links and leaving flush to the OS.
Choosing a Java version and heap for Kafka: supported Java 17, 21 and 25, the documented G1GC settings, heap versus page cache, and why patch-level Java updates matter for security.
Designing Strimzi clusters with KafkaNodePool resources: dedicated controller and broker pools, storage per pool, scaling pools independently and moving workloads between pools.
Deploying Kafka on OpenShift with the Strimzi operator: operator installation, Routes for external clients, security context constraints, storage classes and the support differences between community Strimzi and vendor builds.
Running Kafka without internet access: mirroring release archives and container images, building Connect images with connectors in advance, internal certificate authorities, and update processes for patch releases.
Choosing a multi-site layout: one cluster per site with mirroring, aggregate clusters for a global view, when a stretched cluster is acceptable, and socket buffer tuning for WAN replication.
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