Benchmarking Kafka

How to setup the environment for the Kafka Performance Test.

GKE

1. 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.

2. 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

1. 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.

2. 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

1. 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
     namespace: zookeeper
   spec:
     replicas: 3
   EOF
   

2. 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/v0.22.0/kafka-operator.crds.yaml
   

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

3. Create a 3-broker Kafka Cluster using the 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>
     ...
   

4. 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
   

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

   kubectl exec -it kafka-test -n kafka bash
   ./opt/kafka/bin/kafka-topics.sh --zookeeper zookeeper-client.zookeeper:2181 --topic perftest --create --replication-factor 3 --partitions 3
   ./opt/kafka/bin/kafka-topics.sh --zookeeper zookeeper-client.zookeeper:2181 --topic perftest2 --create --replication-factor 3 --partitions 3
   ./opt/kafka/bin/kafka-topics.sh --zookeeper zookeeper-client.zookeeper:2181 --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

1. 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
   

2. 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