kafka-*-perf-test

The kafka-*-perf-test tools can be used in several ways. In general, it is expected that these tools should be used on a test or development cluster.

The kafka-*-perf-test tools allow you to:

  • Measure, read, and write throughput.
  • Stress test the cluster based on specific parameters (such as message size).
  • Load test for the purpose of evaluating specific metrics or determining the impact of cluster configuration changes.

The kafka-producer-perf-test script can either create a randomly generated byte record:

kafka-producer-perf-test --topic TOPIC --record-size SIZE_IN_BYTES

or randomly read from a set of provided records:

kafka-producer-perf-test --topic TOPIC --payload-delimiter DELIMITER --payload-file INPUT_FILE

where the INPUT_FILE is a concatenated set of pre-generated messages separated by DELIMITER. This script keeps producing messages or limited based on the --num-records flag.

The kafka-consumer-perf-test is:

kafka-consumer-perf-test --broker-list host1:port1,host2:port2,... --zookeeper zk1:port1,zk2:port2,... --topic TOPIC

The flags of most interest for this command are:

  • --group gid: If you run more than one instance of this test, you will want to set different ids for each instance.
  • --num-fetch-threads: Defaults to 1. Increase if higher throughput testing is needed.
  • --from-latest: To start consuming from the latest offset. May be needed for certain types of testing.