Manage Kafka Clusters on Confluent Cloud

Use this topic to understand and manage clusters in Confluent Cloud, using the Confluent Cloud Console, Confluent CLI, and REST API.

Kafka cluster management concepts

Apache Kafka® clusters in Confluent Cloud are different from Kafka clusters in general in that Confluent offers a fully managed service. Use the following concepts to learn more.

Basics

You choose from different types of clusters for use in development, production, and high-traffic workloads. Confluent Cloud is available from all the major cloud providers in regions around the world and provides access to Kafka cluster and topic configuration settings. For more information, see the following topics:

Fault Tolerance
Confluent Cloud provides a centralized global control plane and a distributed collection of servers that operate as a cluster. Clusters can span data centers or cloud provider availability zones (AZs) and provide highly scalable and fault-tolerant systems that support mission-critical applications. For more information, see Resilience in Confluent Cloud.
Dedicated Clusters

Dedicated clusters in Confluent Cloud support options for private networking, self-managed keys, and client quotas for multi-tenant workloads. You provision and manage Dedicated clusters in terms of Confluent Unit for Kafka (CKU). Use CKUs to expand and shrink your cluster. For more information, see the following topics:

For more information about private networking, see Manage Networking on Confluent Cloud.

How to work with Kafka clusters

Use this section to create, delete, and update clusters.

Requirements

  • Operator or admin access to a Confluent Cloud environment.
  • API requests must include an authorization header with an API key and secret. For more information, see Authentication in the Confluent Cloud API reference.

Create Kafka clusters

You can create clusters using the Confluent Cloud Console, Confluent CLI, and REST API. For a description of cluster types and resource quotas for clusters, see Kafka Cluster Types in Confluent Cloud and Service Quotas for Confluent Cloud.

Considerations:

  • Cloud provider and region cannot be changed after provisioning a cluster.

  • For data residency and sovereignty requirements, data you produce to a topic and transmit through Kafka does not move out of the geographic region you select. For more information, see the white paper (PDF) Confluent Cloud Security Controls.

  • Cluster name (display_name) is a friendly name with the following requirements:

    • Use 64 characters or less
    • Use whitespace, Unicode letters, numbers, and the following special characters: Period (.), Comma (,), Ampersand (&), Underscore (_), Plus (+), Bar (|), Open square bracket ([), Close square bracket (]), Slash (/), Dash (-)

    Tip

    The business use of a cluster is a good choice for cluster name.

Choose a cluster type.

  1. Navigate to the clusters page for your environment. If this is your fist cluster, click Create cluster on my own. Otherwise, click + Add cluster.

  2. Choose Basic or Standard and click Begin configuration.

  3. Select a cloud provider tile, Region, and Uptime SLA and click Continue.

  4. Specify Cluster name.

  5. Review your configuration and click Launch cluster.

    Create cluster workflow for logical Kafka clusters

    To verify or add a payment method, or use a promotional code, click Review payment method.

View Kafka clusters

You can view details of a single cluster and lists multiple clusters using the Confluent Cloud Console, Confluent CLI, and REST API.

View a list of Kafka clusters

Use this procedure to list clusters.

To list clusters

  1. From the Administration menu, select Environments.

  2. Select an environment.

    A list of clusters appears.

    Console workflow to list Kafka clusters

View a Kafka cluster

Use this procedure to get details about a cluster.

To list a cluster

  1. Navigate to the clusters page for your environment.

  2. Select Cluster Settings to see details about your cluster. To see capacity details, click Capacity.

    Console workflow to list details for a Kafka cluster

Update Kafka clusters

You can update a cluster using the Confluent Cloud Console, Confluent CLI, and REST API.

Considerations:

  • You can update cluster names for all cluster types.

  • For Basic clusters, you can upgrade cluster type to Standard (cluster types cannot be downgraded).

  • Upgrades from Basic to Standard must be made on their own, with no other requests.

  • For Standard clusters, you can upgrade uptime (SLA downgrades not supported).

  • For Dedicated clusters, you can update number of CKUs.

  • Shrink operations can reduce the capacity of the cluster one (1) CKU at a time to the minimum number of CKU supported by the cluster.

    Note

    Support for shrink operations by more than one CKU at a time is in Limited Availability. To be considered for access before General Availability, contact your account team.

For more information about resizing clusters, see Expand and shrink.

  1. Navigate to the clusters page for your environment.

  2. Select Cluster Settings.

  3. In Identification, click the edit icon.

  4. Enter the new name in Cluster name and click Save changes.

    Console workflow to change Kafka cluster name

To resize Dedicated clusters with Cloud Console, see Expand a Dedicated Kafka Cluster and Shrink a Dedicated Kafka Cluster.

Delete Kafka clusters

You can delete a cluster using the Confluent Cloud Console, Confluent CLI, and REST API. You cannot restore a deleted cluster.

To delete a cluster

  1. Navigate to the clusters page for your environment.

  2. Select Cluster Settings.

  3. Click Delete cluster, enter the cluster name, and click Continue.

    Console workflow to delete Kafka cluster

Confluent retains deleted clusters for a brief period after you delete them. For more information, contact Confluent Cloud Support.