Which Kafka broker configuration gets precedence w

Question

In Apache Kafka, each broker has its own configuration file. Some of the config entries, such as broker ID, are evidently unique to each node.

However, others such as topic retention time or maximum message size should be global to the entire cluster.

In case two brokers have conflicting configurations, which value gets precedence? Or am I wrong to assume that some config entries should be global?

Answer 1

Kafka does not check that each broker has exactly the same configuration.

That said, as you've pointed, some settings could conflict and if it's the case my guess is that at best a crash or worse undefined behaviour !

There is KIP-226 in progress that addresses some of these issues but if you're to deploy many brokers it's recommended you use some automation (K8s, Mesos) to ensure configuration is consistent across all of them.