Benchmarking Kafka

How to setup the environment for the Kafka Performance Test.

GKE

Create a test cluster with 3 nodes for ZooKeeper, 3 for Kafka, 1 Master node and 2 node for clients.
Once your cluster is up and running you can set up the Kubernetes infrastructure.

Create a StorageClass which enables high performance disk requests.

kubectl create -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1
kind: StorageClass
metadata:
  name: fast-ssd
provisioner: kubernetes.io/gce-pd
parameters:
  type: pd-ssd
volumeBindingMode: WaitForFirstConsumer
EOF

EKS

Create a test cluster with 3 nodes for ZooKeeper, 3 for Kafka, 1 Master node and 2 node for clients.

CAUTION:
The ZooKeeper and the Kafka clusters need persistent volume (PV) to store data. Therefore, when installing the operator on Amazon EKS with Kubernetes version 1.23 or later, you must install the EBS CSI driver add-on on your cluster.
Once your cluster is up and running you can set up the Kubernetes infrastructure.

Create a StorageClass which enables high performance disk requests.

kubectl create -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1
kind: StorageClass
metadata:
  name: fast-ssd
provisioner: kubernetes.io/aws-ebs
parameters:
  type: io1
  iopsPerGB: "50"
  fsType: ext4
volumeBindingMode: WaitForFirstConsumer
EOF

Install other required components

Create a ZooKeeper cluster with 3 replicas using Pravega’s Zookeeper Operator.

helm repo add banzaicloud-stable https://kubernetes-charts.banzaicloud.com/
helm install zookeeper-operator --namespace=zookeeper --create-namespace pravega/zookeeper-operator
kubectl create -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: zookeeper.pravega.io/v1beta1
kind: ZookeeperCluster
metadata:
  name: zookeeper-server
  namespace: zookeeper
spec:
  replicas: 3
EOF

Install the Koperator CustomResourceDefinition resources (adjust the version number to the Koperator release you want to install) and the corresponding version of Koperator, the Operator for managing Apache Kafka on Kubernetes.

kubectl create --validate=false -f https://github.com/banzaicloud/koperator/releases/download/v0.25.1/kafka-operator.crds.yaml

helm install kafka-operator --namespace=kafka --create-namespace banzaicloud-stable/kafka-operator

Create a 3-broker Kafka Cluster using this YAML file.

This will install 3 brokers with fast SSD. If you would like the brokers in different zones, modify the following configurations to match your environment and use them in the broker configurations:

apiVersion: kafka.banzaicloud.io/v1beta1
kind: KafkaCluster
...
spec:
  ...
  brokerConfigGroups:
    default:
      affinity:
        nodeAffinity:
          requiredDuringSchedulingIgnoredDuringExecution:
            nodeSelectorTerms:
            - matchExpressions:
              - key: <node-label-key>
                operator: In
                values:
                - <node-label-value-zone-1>
                - <node-label-value-zone-2>
                - <node-label-value-zone-3>
  ...

Create a client container inside the cluster

kubectl create -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: kafka-test
spec:
  containers:
  - name: kafka-test
    image: "wurstmeister/kafka:2.12-2.1.1"
    # Just spin & wait forever
    command: [ "/bin/bash", "-c", "--" ]
    args: [ "while true; do sleep 3000; done;" ]
EOF

Exec into this client and create the perftest, perftest2, perftes3 topics.

For internal listeners exposed by a headless service (KafkaCluster.spec.headlessServiceEnabled is set to true):


kubectl exec -it kafka-test -n kafka bash
./opt/kafka/bin/kafka-topics.sh --bootstrap-server kafka-headless.kafka:29092 --topic perftest --create --replication-factor 3 --partitions 3
./opt/kafka/bin/kafka-topics.sh --bootstrap-server kafka-headless.kafka:29092 --topic perftest2 --create --replication-factor 3 --partitions 3
./opt/kafka/bin/kafka-topics.sh --bootstrap-server kafka-headless.kafka:29092 --topic perftest3 --create --replication-factor 3 --partitions 3

For internal listeners exposed by a regular service (KafkaCluster.spec.headlessServiceEnabled set to false):

kubectl exec -it kafka-test -n kafka bash
./opt/kafka/bin/kafka-topics.sh --bootstrap-server kafka-all-broker.kafka:29092 --topic perftest --create --replication-factor 3 --partitions 3
./opt/kafka/bin/kafka-topics.sh --bootstrap-server kafka-all-broker.kafka:29092 --topic perftest2 --create --replication-factor 3 --partitions 3
./opt/kafka/bin/kafka-topics.sh --bootstrap-server kafka-all-broker.kafka:29092 --topic perftest3 --create --replication-factor 3 --partitions 3

Monitoring environment is automatically installed. To monitor the infrastructure we used the official Node Exporter dashboard available with id 1860.

Run the tests

Run performance test against the cluster, by building this Docker image.

docker build -t <yourname>/perfload:0.1.0 /loadgens
docker push <yourname>/perfload:0.1.0

Submit the performance testing application:

kubectl create -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  labels:
    app: loadtest
  name: perf-load
  namespace: kafka
spec:
  progressDeadlineSeconds: 600
  replicas: 4
  revisionHistoryLimit: 10
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: loadtest
  strategy:
    rollingUpdate:
      maxSurge: 25%
      maxUnavailable: 25%
    type: RollingUpdate
  template:
    metadata:
      creationTimestamp: null
      labels:
        app: loadtest
    spec:
      containers:
      - args:
        - -brokers=kafka-0:29092,kafka-1:29092,kafka-2:29092
        - -topic=perftest
        - -required-acks=all
        - -message-size=512
        - -workers=20
        - -api-version=3.1.0
        image: yourorg/yourimage:yourtag
        imagePullPolicy: Always
        name: sangrenel
        resources: {}
        terminationMessagePath: /dev/termination-log
        terminationMessagePolicy: File
      dnsPolicy: ClusterFirst
      restartPolicy: Always
      schedulerName: default-scheduler
      securityContext: {}
      terminationGracePeriodSeconds: 30
EOF

Last modified October 26, 2023: Standalone site (#125) (6eafe48)