DUE TO SPAM, SIGN-UP IS DISABLED. Goto Selfserve wiki signup and request an account.
This page is meant as a template for writing a KIP. To create a KIP choose Tools->Copy on this page and modify with your content and replace the heading with the next KIP number and a description of your issue. Replace anything in italics with your own description.
Status
Current state: Draft
Discussion thread: here [Change the link from the KIP proposal email archive to your own email thread]
JIRA: here
Please keep the discussion on the mailing list rather than commenting on the wiki (wiki discussions get unwieldy fast).
Motivation
Kafka's controller currently has no visibility into each broker's static configuration. When a broker registers with the controller via BrokerRegistrationRequest, it reports its supported feature versions, listeners, rack, and log directories, but not its configuration values (i.e., the settings defined in server.properties). This creates a fundamental gap that blocks two categories of improvements:
Aligning incrementalAlterConfigs validation (KIP-1256)
The controller and broker currently behave differently when processing Admin.incrementalAlterConfigs requests. One key inconsistency is that brokers immediately reject invalid dynamic configuration values, while the controller silently drops them. To replicate broker-side validation logic, the controller needs each broker's static configuration as context — certain dynamic configuration constraints depend on the static values present on that broker. Without this information, the controller cannot perform faithful broker-equivalent validation.
Enforcing configuration constraints during MetadataVersion upgrades (KIP-1294)
As the cluster's MetadataVersion advances, new constraints on configuration values may come into effect. For example, a future MetadataVersion might raise the minimum value of log.segment.bytes from 1 byte to 3 MB. Without knowledge of each broker's static configuration, the controller cannot proactively verify that all brokers satisfy the constraints of the target version before allowing an upgrade
to proceed. The incompatibility can only be discovered after the fact, when a broker fails on restart.
This KIP addresses the root cause shared by both problems: the controller lacks broker static configuration data. We propose that brokers include their non-sensitive static configurations in BrokerRegistrationRequest, and that the controller persists this information in RegisterBrokerRecord so it survives controller failovers. This KIP intentionally contains no validation logic — it provides only the infrastructure that KIP-1256 and KIP-1294 build upon.
Public Interfaces
BrokerRegistrationRequest
We propose to bump BrokerRegistrationRequest and BrokerRegistrationResponse to a new version to include a map of static configurations. This allows brokers to report their local server.properties settings to the Controller during the registration phase.
|
BrokerRegistrationResponse.json
1 |
|
BrokerRegistrationRecord
We propose updating RegisterBrokerRecord to Version 5. This version introduces a new field StaticConfigs, which is a collection of BrokerStaticConfig objects. This allows the Controller to persist the broker's reported static settings directly within the metadata log.
BrokerRegerationRecord.json
|
Proposed Changes
Broker side
Only configurations that have a validator defined in ConfigDef are included. This naturally excludes most security/SSL/SASL configs (which have no ConfigDef validator and rely on their own validation paths), as well as string/boolean configs that only have type checking. Sensitive configurations (ConfigDef.Type.PASSWORD) are also excluded.
Controller side
When receiving a BrokerRegistrationRequest v6 and the current MetadataVersion supports static configs, the controller copies the StaticConfigs field into the RegisterBrokerRecord.
The in-memory BrokerRegistration object is extended with a Map<String, String> field to hold the static configs. This field is populated during ClusterControlManager.replay(RegisterBrokerRecord) and is accessible to higher-level logic (KIP-1256, KIP-1294) without requiring additional requests to the broker.
Compatibility, Deprecation, and Migration Plan
- We bump the versions of RegisterBrokerRecord, BrokerRegistrationRequest, BrokerRegistrationResponse, the old record and RPC version still support.
Test Plan
Unit test , integration test to cover this new feature.
Rejected Alternatives
Only report configs with non-default values - During a rolling upgrade, different brokers may be running different Kafka versions with different defaults for the same config. A broker running an older version may omit a config because it matches its own default, but that default may differ from the controller's version. The controller cannot reliably fill in the "correct" default because it only knows its own version's defaults, not the defaults of every broker version in the cluster.
- Report all non-sensitive config -
Reporting all non-sensitive configs (~388 entries, ~18 KB per broker) was considered. While simpler in filtering logic, it includes 163 configs that have no ConfigDef validator. The additional ~8 KB per broker adds up in large clusters (8 MB for 1000 brokers) with no practical benefit — configs without validators cannot be validated regardless of whether they are reported. The chosen approach (only configs with validators, ~225 entries, ~10 KB per broker) keeps the payload smaller and automatically expands when new validators are added in future KIPs.