Kafka without ZooKeeper on Mac Laptop

Apache Kafka is a distributed event streaming platform that has become the de facto standard for building real-time data pipelines and streaming applications.

While Kafka is designed to run in a distributed cluster environment, it is possible to run a single-node Kafka instance on your laptop without the need for ZooKeeper, which is traditionally used for managing the Kafka cluster.

Running Kafka without ZooKeeper might seem counterintuitive, but it can be useful for various purposes, such as learning, testing, and developing applications locally before deploying them to a production environment.

Here’s how you can set up Kafka without ZooKeeper on your laptop:

1. Download Kafka:

First, download the latest version of Apache Kafka from the official website (https://kafka.apache.org/downloads).

2. Extract the Kafka Package: After downloading, extract the Kafka package to a directory of your choice.

3. Configure Kafka: Generate the Unique ID for your kafka cluster

4. Format the Log Directories

5. Start Kafka Server:

You can now interact with Kafka using the provided command-line tools, such as

`kafka-console-producer.sh` and `kafka-console-consumer.sh`, or by developing applications that connect to your local Kafka instance.

Keep in mind that running Kafka without ZooKeeper is suitable for local development, testing, and learning purposes.

For production deployments, it is recommended to set up a proper Kafka cluster with ZooKeeper for managing the distributed environment.