How to install Kafka on Windows?

Question

I\'m trying to install Kafka message queue on Windows for testing purposes (not for production).

I found this article on how to install Apache Kafka

Answer 1

Kafka & Zookeeper have inbuilt Windows specific scripts as verified in the latest version. As mentioned in other other answers, the directory for windows scripts will be under kafka_2.12-2.4.0\bin\windows for Kafka. Zookeeper scripts are under /bin only but ending with "*.cmd"

There will be few minor additional steps you will have to do with ZooKeeper & Kafka like

• Creating zoo.cfg for ZooKeeper
• Configuring windows specific data directory for ZeeKeeper
• Kafka comes with default configuration file & it has very good OS specific handling i.e. log.dirs=/tmp/kafka-logs but it will create that directory structure under C:/ directory seamlessly without failing.

It is also easy to quickly setup a Kafka Cluster with multiple Kafka Brokers on Windows with minor configurations. You can also create topics, publish/consume messages, verify topics/partitions etc. all from Windows Command Prompt. Here is a good detailed reference for the windows specific setup Kafka Setup on Windows OS | Basic Installation, Setup, Verification, Cluster Setup, Storage