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Use Kafdrop Web UI with Aiven for Apache Kafka®

Kafdrop is a web UI for Apache Kafka® to monitor clusters, view topics and consumer groups, and integrate with the Schema Registry. It supports Avro, JSON, and Protobuf.

Prerequisites​

  • Access to the Aiven Console
  • Aiven CLI
  • Docker installed. For Mac M1 chip users, ensure Docker is version 4.26.1 or lower to avoid compatibility issues

Retrieve SSL certificate files​

Aiven for Apache Kafka uses TLS security by default. To retrieve the necessary SSL certificates, do one of the following:

Set up a Kafdrop configuration file​

Kafdrop supports both SASL and SSL authentication methods. This example uses SSL, which requires a keystore and truststore.

  1. Follow the instructions in the keystore and truststore documentation to create the necessary files.

  2. Create a Kafdrop configuration file named kafdrop.properties with the following content. Replace KEYSTORE_PWD and TRUSTSTORE_PWD with your keystore and truststore passwords:

    security.protocol=SSL
    ssl.keystore.password=KEYSTORE_PWD
    ssl.keystore.type=PKCS12
    ssl.truststore.password=TRUSTSTORE_PWD

Run Kafdrop on Docker​

To run Kafdrop in a Docker or Podman container, use the following command. Replace KAFKA_SERVICE_URI with your Aiven for Apache Kafka® service URI from the Overview page in the Aiven Console. Replace client.truststore.jks and client.keystore.p12 with your keystore and truststore file names:

docker run -d --rm -p 9000:9000 \
  -e KAFKA_BROKERCONNECT=KAFKA_SERVICE_URI \
  -e KAFKA_PROPERTIES="$(cat kafka/kafdrop.properties | base64)" \
  -e KAFKA_TRUSTSTORE="$(cat kafka/client.truststore.jks | base64)" \
  -e KAFKA_KEYSTORE="$(cat kafka/client.keystore.p12 | base64)" \
  obsidiandynamics/kafdrop

For users with a Mac M1 chip, add the --platform linux/amd64 flag to the command:

docker run --platform linux/amd64 -d --rm -p 9000:9000 \
  -e KAFKA_BROKERCONNECT=KAFKA_SERVICE_URI \
  -e KAFKA_PROPERTIES="$(cat kafka/kafdrop.properties | base64)" \
  -e KAFKA_TRUSTSTORE="$(cat kafka/client.truststore.jks | base64)" \
  -e KAFKA_KEYSTORE="$(cat kafka/client.keystore.p12 | base64)" \
  obsidiandynamics/kafdrop
note

Docker versions above 4.26.1 have known issues on Mac M1 chips. We recommend using Docker version 4.26.1 or lower.

If you need Kafdrop to deserialize Avro messages using the Karapace schema registry, add the following two lines to the docker run command:

-e SCHEMAREGISTRY_AUTH="avnadmin:SCHEMA_REGISTRY_PWD"   \
-e SCHEMAREGISTRY_CONNECT="https://SCHEMA_REGISTRY_URI" \

Replace SCHEMA_REGISTRY_PWD with the schema registry password and SCHEMA_REGISTRY_URI with the schema registry URI available on the Overview page in the Aiven Console.

Access Kafdrop​

After Kafdrop starts, you can access it at localhost:9000:

Kafdrop in action

With Kafdrop, you can perform the following tasks over an Aiven for Apache Kafka® service:

  • View and search topics
  • Create and delete topics
  • View brokers
  • View messages