Top 20 Apache Kafka Interview Questions And Answers For Freshers & Experienced

Introduction

Kafka is an open-source message broker project that is written in Scala programming language and it is an initiative by Apache Software Foundation. The product got popular over time and today it has become one of the leading data processing tools of choice. The reason for the popularity of Kafka is a unique set of features that make it the most suitable choice for data integration. The extensive throughputs and low-latency features make Kafka capable of handling data feeds in real-time. Some of the most highlighting features of data integration tools include – data partitioning, scalability, low-latency, high throughputs etc make it an excellent fit for data integration related use-cases. The popularity of Kafka is the reason why the product has a plethora of job options and career prospects around the tool. Adding Kafka skills to your resume is the perfect way to excel in your profile. 

If you are looking to attend a Kafka interview recently, here are the most popular Apache Kafka interview questions and answers to help you in the right way. If you have more interesting ideas then don’t forget to add more questions in the comment section as per your experience.

Kafka Interview Questions

1. How will you define Kafka?
2. What are the main features of Kafka that make it suitable for data integration and data processing in real-time?
3. What are the major components of the Kafka integration product?
4. Explain the offset in Kafka data integration tool?
5. What is Zookeeper and Is it possible to run Kafka without Zookeeper?
6. What is the meaning of Leader and Follower in Kafka?
7. What is a consumer group in Kafka?
8. How to balance loads in Kafka when one server fails?
9. Do you know any traditional technique of message transfer?
10. How is Kafka preferred over traditional message transfer techniques?
11. Explain the meaning of broker in Kafka?
12. Explain the maximum size of a message that can be received by the Kafka?
13. Do you know how to improve the throughput of the remote consumer?
14. Is replication necessary or just a waste of time in Kafka?
15. Is it possible to get the offset value of the message once it is produced already?
16. What is the main difference between Kafka and Fume?
17. Explain the role of a producer API in Kafka?
18. In the producer, when there comes the situation of queue fullness?
19. How to initiate the Kafka server? Do you know the process?
20. How will you explain the Kafka architecture?

Apache Kafka Interview Questions And Answers

For the person looking to attend a Kafka interview recently, here are the most popular Kafka interview questions and answers to help you in the right way. Here, we have included the top frequently asked questions with answers to help freshers and the experienced.

Apache Kafka Interview Questions And Answers For Freshers

1. How will you define Kafka?

Ans:- Kafka is an open-source message broker project that is written in Scala programming language and it is an initiative by Apache Software Foundation. A unique set of features make it the most suitable choice for data integration and one of the leading data processing tools of choice.

2. What are the main features of Kafka that make it suitable for data integration and data processing in real-time?

Ans:-Some of the most highlighting features of Kafka that make it popular worldwide includes – data partitioning, scalability, low-latency, high throughputs etc. These features are the reason why Kafka has become the most suitable choice for data integration and data processing in the real-time.

3. What are the major components of the Kafka integration product?

• Topic–The message stream that belongs to the same pattern.
• Producer–It helps in publishing messages to the topic.
• Broker –This is a set of various servers where all published data is stored.
• Consumer–It subscribes to different topics and fetches data from the brokers.

4. Explain the offset in Kafka data integration tool?

Ans:-Messages are stored in partitions and assigned a unique ID to each of them for quick and easy access. That unique number is named as the offset that is responsible to identify each of the messages in the partition.

Read: Difference Between Apache Hadoop and Spark Framework

5. What is Zookeeper and Is it possible to run Kafka without Zookeeper?

Ans:-Zookeeper is used to store offset values of messages. There is no alternative to Zookeeper in Kafka. In case, Zookeeper is down then this is not possible to serve any of the client requests.

6. What is the meaning of Leader and Follower in Kafka?

Ans:-Every partition in Kafka has one main server that is named as “Leader” and one or more non-connected servers that are named as the “Followers”.

7. What is a consumer group in Kafka?

Ans:-A Consumer group is made up of one or more consumers that together subscribe to the different topics and fetch data from the brokers.

8. How to balance loads in Kafka when one server fails?

Ans:-Every partition in Kafka has one main server that plays the role of a leader and one or more non-connected servers that are named as the followers. Here, the leading server sets the permission and the rest of the servers just follow him accordingly. In case, the leading server fails then followers take the responsibility of the main server.

9. Do you know any traditional technique of message transfer?

Ans:-Yes, these techniques are queuing, and publish-subscribe. However, Kafka generalizes both of the techniques through consumer groups.

10. How is Kafka preferred over traditional message transfer techniques?

Ans:-Kafka products are more scalable, faster, robust and distributed by design.

Read: An Introduction and Differences Between YARN and MapReduce

Apache Kafka Interview Questions And Answers For Experienced

11. Explain the meaning of broker in Kafka?

Ans:- Broker and server have the meaning in Kafka.

12. Explain the maximum size of a message that can be received by the Kafka?

Ans:-It is approx. 1000000 bytes.

13. Do you know how to improve the throughput of the remote consumer?

Ans:-Well, it is an interesting and advanced concept in Kafka. If the consumer is located in a distant location then you need to optimize the socket buffer size to tune the overall throughput of a remote consumer.

14. Is replication necessary or just a waste of time in Kafka?

Ans:-Replicating messages is a good practice in Kafka that assures that messages will never lose even if the main server fails.

15. Is it possible to get the offset value of the message once it is produced already?

Ans:-No, we cannot do that.

16. What is the main difference between Kafka and Flume?

Ans:-Both products are used to process data in the real-time but Kafka is proven more scalable and ensures durability.

Read: How to install Hadoop and Set up a Hadoop cluster?

17. Explain the role of producer API in Kafka?

Ans:-A producer API exposes the functionalities of all producers through a single API to the client.

18. In the producer, when there comes the situation of queue fullness?

Ans:-If there are not enough servers added for load balancing, there comes a situation of queue fullness.

19. How to initiate the Kafka server? Do you know the process?

Ans:-Yes, I know. To initiate the Kafka server, you need to initiate the Zookeeper server first then you could fire up the Kafka server.

20. How will you explain the Kafka architecture?

Ans:-Kafka product is based on a distributed design where one cluster has multiple brokers/servers associated with it. The ‘Topic’ will be divided into plenty of partitions to store the messages and there is one consumer group to fetch the messages from brokers.

Conclusion

With the rising demand for Apache Kafka, you will have plenty of job opportunities with the companies of your dreams, so don’t stop looking & trying. We hope this blog on Kafka interview questions would have given you some insight into what kind of questions you might face. The Kafka interview questions listed here will surely improve your chances so prepare them well and cement your chances of starting a successful Apache Kafka career. 

If you are looking for more detailed insight into Kafka related jobs, you can reach out to our career consultants to strengthen your Kafka skills and apt career guidance!

We’d love to hear more Kafka Interview Questions in the comments section, so drop us a comment if you have attended any Kafka interviews! 

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