Managing topics and access¶

Warning

This feature applies only to Aiven hosted Kafka. On-premises Kafka is deprecated, and creating new topics on-premises was disabled summer 2021. For on-premises Kafka, see on-premises Kafka documentation.

Creating topics and defining access¶

Creating or modifying a Topic Kubernetes resource will trigger topic creation and ACL management with Aiven (hosted Kafka provider). The topic name will be prefixed with your team namespace, thus in the example below, the fully qualified topic name will be myteam.mytopic. This name will be set in the .status.fullyQualifiedName field on your Topic resource once the Topic is synchronized to Aiven.

To add access to this topic for your application, see the next section: Accessing topics from an application.

Topic resources can only be specified in GCP clusters. However, applications might access topics from any cluster, including on-premises. For details, read the next section.

Currently, use the nav-dev pool for development, and nav-prod for production. If you need cross-environment communications, use the nav-infrastructure pool, but please consult the NAIS team before you do.

Pool	Min. replication	Max. replication	Topic declared in	Available from
`nav-dev`	2	3	`dev-gcp`	`dev-gcp`, `dev-fss`
`nav-prod`	2	9	`prod-gcp`	`prod-gcp`, `prod-fss`
`nav-infrastructure`	2	3	`prod-gcp`	`dev-gcp`, `dev-fss`, `prod-gcp`, `prod-fss`

ACLs¶

On your topic, you must define ACLs to manage access to the topic. Access is granted to applications, belonging to teams. Every ACL must contain team, application and which access to grant. Possible access is read, write and readwrite.

It is possible to use simple wildcards (*) in both team and application names, which matches any character any number of times. Be aware that due to the way ACLs are generated and length limits, the ends of long names can be cut, eliminating any wildcards at the end.

topic.yaml

---
apiVersion: kafka.nais.io/v1
kind: Topic
metadata:
  name: mytopic
  namespace: myteam
  labels:
    team: myteam
spec:
  pool: nav-dev
  acl:
    - team: myteam
      application: ownerapp
      access: readwrite   # read, write, readwrite
    - team: bigteam
      application: consumerapp1
      access: read
    - team: bigteam
      application: consumerapp2
      access: read
    - team: bigteam
      application: producerapp1
      access: write
    - team: producerteam
      application: producerapp
      access: write
    - team: trusted-team
      application: *
      access: read     # All applications from this trusted-team has read
    - team: *
      application: aivia
      access: read     # Applications named aivia from any team has read
    - team: myteam
      application: rapid-*
      access: readwrite   # Applications from myteam with names starting with `rapid-` has readwrite access

Configuration¶

Topics may be configured beyond the default settings for various use cases. Only a subset of all the possible topic-level configurations are available.

topic.yaml

---
apiVersion: kafka.nais.io/v1
kind: Topic
metadata:
  name: mytopic
  namespace: myteam
  labels:
    team: myteam
spec:
  pool: nav-dev
  config:  # optional; all fields are optional too; defaults shown
    cleanupPolicy: delete  # delete, compact, compact,delete
    maxMessageBytes: 1048588  # 1 MiB
    minimumInSyncReplicas: 2
    partitions: 1
    replication: 3  # see min/max requirements
    retentionBytes: -1  # -1 means unlimited
    retentionHours: 168  # -1 means unlimited
    segmentHours: 168  # 1 week
  acl:
    - team: myteam
      application: ownerapp
      access: readwrite

Maximum message size¶

The maxMessageBytes configuration controls the largest record batch size allowed by Kafka.

It has a default value of 1048588 (1 MiB) and a maximum value of 5242880 (5 MiB).

Danger

Generally speaking, Kafka is not designed to handle large messages. We recommend that you do not increase the maxMessageBytes value above the defaults, unless absolutely necessary.

To keep your Kafka messages below the size limit, do consider implementing strategies such as:

using an efficient serialization format such as Avro or Protobuf
using compression - set the compression.type configuration for your producer(s)
using patterns such as claim-checks or splitting messages into multiple segments

If you do increase the maxMessageBytes value, you will need to configure all your producers and consumers as well to accommodate this.

For producers:

set max.request.size equal to maxMessageBytes

For consumers:

set max.partition.fetch.bytes equal to maxMessageBytes

Segment rolling¶

Each topic partition is split into segments. The segmentHours configuration controls the period of time after which Kafka will commit the segment even if not full to ensure that retention can delete or compact old data.

It has a default value of 168 (1 week) and a minimum value of 1 (1 hour).

Setting this value lower can be useful for GDPR purposes where you need to compact or delete data more regularly than the default setting of 1 week.

Data catalog metadata¶

If your topic exposes data meant for consumption by a wider audience, you should define some metadata describing the topic and its contents. This data will be automatically scraped and added to the internal data catalog. If the catalog key is set to public, the topic metadata is also published to the external data catalog and the National Data Catalog.

Syntax:

topic.yaml

apiVersion: kafka.nais.io/v1
kind: Topic
metadata:
  annotations:
    dcat.data.nav.no/<key>: "<value>"

Use the following annotations and prefix them with dcat.data.nav.no/. Default values will be used where not supplied.

Key	Importance	Comment	Example Value
title	mandatory	String	Inntektskjema mottatt fra Altinn	topic name
description	mandatory	String	Inntektsmeldingen arbeidsgiveren sender fra eget lønns- og personalsystem eller fra altinn.no
theme	recommended	A main category of the resource. A resource can have multiple themes entered as a comma-separated list of strings.	inntekt
keyword	recommended	A string or a list of strings	inntekt,arbeidsgiver,altinn

One or more of the following keys can also be supplied if the default values below are not sufficient:

Key	Importance	Comment	Example Value	Default value
temporal	optional	An interval of time covered by the topic, start and end date. Formatted as two ISO 8601 dates (or datetimes) separated by a slash.	2020/2020 or 2020-06/2020-06	current year/current year
language	optional	Two or three letter code.	NO	NO
creator	optional	The entity responsible for producing the topic. An agent (eg. person, group, software or physical artifact).	NAV	team name
publisher	optional	The entity responsible for making the topic available. An agent (eg. person, group, software or physical artifact).	NAV	NAV
accessRights	optional	Information about who can access the topic or an indication of its security status.	internal	internal
license	optional	Either a license URI or a title.	MIT
rights	optional	A statement that concerns all rights not addressed with `license` or `accessRights`, such as copyright statements.	Copyright 2020, NAV	Copyright year, NAV
catalog	optional	The catalog(s) where the metadata will be published. The value can be either `internal` (only visibible within the organization) or `public`.	public	internal

Permanently deleting topic and data¶

Warning

Permanent deletes are irreversible. Enable this feature only as a step to completely remove your data.

When a Topic resource is deleted from a Kubernetes cluster, the Kafka topic is still retained, and the data kept intact. If you need to remove data and start from scratch, you must add the following annotation to your Topic resource:

topic.yaml

---
apiVersion: kafka.nais.io/v1
kind: Topic
metadata:
  annotations:
    kafka.nais.io/removeDataWhenResourceIsDeleted: "true"

When this annotation is in place, deleting the topic resource from Kubernetes will also delete the Kafka topic and all of its data.

Accessing topics from an application¶

Adding .kafka.pool to your Application spec will inject Kafka credentials into your pod. Your application needs to follow some design guidelines; please read the entire next section on application configuration. Make sure that the topic name matches the fullyQualifiedName found in the Topic resource, e.g. myteam.mytopic.

nais.yaml

---
apiVersion: nais.io/v1alpha1
kind: Application
metadata:
  name: consumerapp
  namespace: myteam
  labels:
    team: myteam
spec:
  kafka:
    pool: nav-dev    # enum of nav-dev, nav-prod

Last update: 2023-08-21
Created: 2021-09-15