Kafka FAQs

Question 1

What authentication methods does Kafka MCP support for connecting to Kafka?

Accepted Answer

Kafka MCP offers universal Kafka authentication support, including SASL mechanisms like PLAIN, SCRAM (SHA-256, SHA-512), and GSSAPI (Kerberos), as well as mTLS (mutual TLS) for secure client certificate-based connections.

Question 2

What is Kafka MCP and what does it do?

Accepted Answer

Kafka MCP (Model Context Protocol) is a server that enables AI assistants to securely and safely interact with Apache Kafka clusters. It allows AI to manage Kafka topics, messages, consumer groups, and retrieve cluster information through a controlled interface.

Question 3

What kind of Kafka operations can AI assistants perform with this tool?

Accepted Answer

AI assistants can perform 12 distinct Kafka operations, categorized into topic management (list, describe, create), message operations (consume, produce), consumer group management (list, describe, reset offsets), and cluster information retrieval (cluster info, list brokers, get watermarks).

Question 4

How does Kafka MCP ensure security and safety for Kafka clusters?

Accepted Answer

It provides 2-tier access control (READ and READ/WRITE modes), supports universal Kafka authentication (SASL, mTLS), and includes critical safety controls such as protected internal topics, consumer group validation, configurable message size limits, and optional rate limiting and audit logging.

Question 5

Can AI assistants perform write operations (e.g., creating topics, producing messages) using Kafka MCP?

Accepted Answer

By default, Kafka MCP operates in a read-only mode to enhance safety. To enable write operations, such as creating topics, producing messages, or resetting consumer group offsets, the `SAFETY_ALLOW_WRITE_OPERATIONS` environment variable must be explicitly set to `true`.

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