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Creating a Kafka configuration instance

A Kafka configuration instance represents an external Apache Kafka server or cluster of servers that is the source of stream data that is processed in real time by Event Strategy rules in your application. You must create a Kafka configuration instance before you can create Kafka data sets for connecting to specific topics that are part of the cluster. You can create an instance of a Kafka cluster in the Data-Admin-Kafka class of the Pega Platform.

You can connect to Apache Kafka cluster version 0.10.0.1 or later.

Prerequisites

Perform the following steps to create a Kafka configuration instance that represents a Kafka cluster in the Pega Platform:

  1. In Designer Studio, click + Create > SysAdmin > Kafka.
  2. Enter a short description for the rule.
  3. In the Kafka field, enter the rule ID, for example, MyKafkaInstance.
  4. Click Create and open.
  5. In the Details section, perform the following actions:
    1. Click Add host.
    2. In the Host field, enter the address of the Kafka cluster.
    3. In the Port field, enter the port number.
    4. Optional: Click Add host to configure additional host and port pairs to connect to.

    The Pega Platform discovers all the nodes in the cluster during the first connection. This means that you can enter a single host and port combination to connect to a Kafka cluster. As a best practice, enter at least two host and port combinations to ensure a successful connection when a node is unavailable during a Pega Platform restart.

  6. Optional: Configure the SSL authentication settings for the communication between the Pega Platform and the Kafka cluster:
    1. In the Security settings section, select the Use SSL configuration check box.
    2. In the Truststore field, press the Down Arrow key and select a truststore file that contains a Kafka certificate or create a truststore record by clicking the Open icon.
    3. Configure the client authentication by selecting the Use client certificate check box and providing the Pega Platform private key and private key password credentials in the Keystore and Key password fields respectively.
  7. Optional: If the SASL authentication method is enabled in the Kafka cluster, configure the SASL authentication settings for the communication between the Pega Platform and the Kafka cluster. In the Authentication section, depending on the SASL authentication method that you configured in the Kafka cluster, perform one of the following actions:
  8. Click Save.