Confluent Stream Data Platform on Docker (DEPRECATED)

Note: These images are no longer being updated. Confluent's versions of Docker images for Confluent Platform may be found here.

Experimental docker images for running the Confluent Platform. These images are currently intended for development use, not for production use.

Quickstart

The Docker version of the Confluent Quickstart looks like this:

# Start Zookeeper and expose port 2181 for use by the host machine
docker run -d --name zookeeper -p 2181:2181 confluent/zookeeper

# Start Kafka and expose port 9092 for use by the host machine
docker run -d --name kafka -p 9092:9092 --link zookeeper:zookeeper confluent/kafka

# Start Schema Registry and expose port 8081 for use by the host machine
docker run -d --name schema-registry -p 8081:8081 --link zookeeper:zookeeper \
    --link kafka:kafka confluent/schema-registry

# Start REST Proxy and expose port 8082 for use by the host machine
docker run -d --name rest-proxy -p 8082:8082 --link zookeeper:zookeeper \
    --link kafka:kafka --link schema-registry:schema-registry confluent/rest-proxy

If you're using boot2docker, you'll need to adjust how you run Kafka:

# Get the IP address of the docker machine
DOCKER_MACHINE=`boot2docker ip`

# Start Kafka and expose port 9092 for use by the host machine
# Also configure the broker to use the docker machine's IP address
docker run -d --name kafka -p 9092:9092 --link zookeeper:zookeeper \
    --env KAFKA_ADVERTISED_HOST_NAME=$DOCKER_MACHINE confluent/kafka

If all goes well when you run the quickstart, docker ps should give you something that looks like this:

CONTAINER ID        IMAGE                              COMMAND                  CREATED             STATUS              PORTS                    NAMES
7fc453ca701c        confluent/rest-proxy               "/usr/local/bin/rest-"   2 minutes ago       Up 2 minutes        0.0.0.0:8082->8082/tcp   rest-proxy
4d33d52a98bd        confluent/schema-registry:latest   "/usr/local/bin/schem"   2 minutes ago       Up 2 minutes        0.0.0.0:8081->8081/tcp   schema-registry     
d9613d3bc37d        confluent/kafka:latest             "/usr/local/bin/kafka"   2 minutes ago       Up 2 minutes        0.0.0.0:9092->9092/tcp   kafka               
459afcb7dfcf        confluent/zookeeper:latest         "/usr/local/bin/zk-do"   2 minutes ago       Up 2 minutes        0.0.0.0:2181->2181/tcp   zookeeper

Running on Multiple Remote Hosts and Clustering

To run across multiple hosts you will need some way of communicating between Docker hosts so all remote containers can see each other. This is typically done via some sort of service discovery mechanism (so containers/services can find each other) and/or SDN (so containers can communicate) such as weave or flannel as SDN examples. Having that in place, you can use environment variables to specify the IP/hostname and respective ports for the remote containers and forgo the use of --link. For example to make a 3-node Zookeeper ensemble, each running on separate Docker hosts (zk-1:172.16.42.101, zk-2:172.16.42.102, and zk-3:172.16.42.103), and have a remote Kafka 2-node cluster connection:

docker run --name zk-1 -e zk_id=1 -e zk_server.1=172.16.42.101:2888:3888 -e zk_server.2=172.16.42.102:2888:3888 -e zk_server.3=172.16.42.103:2888:3888 -p 2181:2181 -p 2888:2888 -p 3888:3888 confluent/zookeeper
docker run --name zk-2 -e zk_id=2 -e zk_server.1=172.16.42.101:2888:3888 -e zk_server.2=172.16.42.102:2888:3888 -e zk_server.3=172.16.42.103:2888:3888 -p 2181:2181 -p 2888:2888 -p 3888:3888 confluent/zookeeper
docker run --name zk-3 -e zk_id=3 -e zk_server.1=172.16.42.101:2888:3888 -e zk_server.2=172.16.42.102:2888:3888 -e zk_server.3=172.16.42.103:2888:3888 -p 2181:2181 -p 2888:2888 -p 3888:3888 confluent/zookeeper
docker run --name kafka-1 -e KAFKA_BROKER_ID=1 -e KAFKA_ZOOKEEPER_CONNECT=172.16.42.101:2181,172.16.42.102:2181,172.16.42.103:2181 -p 9092:9092 confluent/kafka
docker run --name kafka-2 -e KAFKA_BROKER_ID=2 -e KAFKA_ZOOKEEPER_CONNECT=172.16.42.101:2181,172.16.42.102:2181,172.16.42.103:2181 -p 9092:9092 confluent/kafka

Changing settings

The images support using environment variables via the Docker -e | --env flags for setting various settings in the respective images. For example:

For the Zookeeper image use variables prefixed with ZOOKEEPER_ with the variables expressed exactly as how they would appear in the zookeeper.properties file. As an example, to set syncLimit and server.1 you'd run docker run --name zk -e ZOOKEEPER_syncLimit=2 -e ZOOKEEPER__server.1=localhost:2888:3888 confluent/zookeeper.
For the Kafka image use variables prefixed with KAFKA_ with an underscore (_) separating each word instead of periods. As an example, to set broker.id and offsets.storage you'd run docker run --name kafka --link zookeeper:zookeeper -e KAFKA_BROKER_ID=2 -e KAFKA_OFFSETS_STORAGE=kafka confluent/kafka.
For the Schema Registry image use variables prefixed with SCHEMA_REGISTRY_ with an underscore (_) separating each word instead of periods. As an example, to set kafkastore.topic and debug you'd run docker run --name schema-registry --link zookeeper:zookeeer --link kafka:kafka -e SCHEMA_REGISTRY_KAFKASTORE_TOPIC=_schemas -e SCHEMA_REGISTRY_DEBUG=true confluent/schema-registry.
For the Kafka REST Proxy image use variables prefixed with REST_PROXY_ with an underscore (_) separating each word instead of periods. As an example, to set id and zookeeper_connect you'd run docker run --name rest-proxy --link schema-registry:schema-registry --link zookeeper:zookeeer -e REST_PROXY_ID=2 -e REST_PROXY_ZOOKEEPER_CONNECT=192.168.1.101:2182 confluent/rest-proxy.

You can also download your own file, with similar variable substitution as shown above. To download your own file use the prefixes as shown above, with the special variable CFG_URL appended. For example, to download your own ZK configuration file and leverage the ZOOKEEPER_ variable substitution you could do docker run --name zk -e ZOOKEEPER_CFG_URL=http://myurl/zookeeper.properties ZOOKEEPER_id=1 -e ZOOKEEPER_maxClientCnxns=20 confluent/zookeeper.

Potential Caveats

Running Kafka in Docker does have some potential Caveats.

Cluster metadata will use the advertised.listeners configuration setting. This defaults to the hostname of the machine it's running in.
NAT networking requires proper advertisement of the host endpoints. This requires a 1 to 1 port mapping such as -p 9092:9092, changing the advertised.listeners to match the docker port mapping, or --net=host. Using host networking is recommended.

Docker Compose

The examples/fullstack directory contains a Docker compose script with a full Confluent stack. This include Zookeeper, a Kafka Broker, the rest proxy, and the schema registry.

Setup your environment

This command will create a docker machine called confluent with a hostname of confluent. Note you can change the driver to whatever virtualization platform you currently use.

docker-machine create --driver virtualbox confluent

This command will setup your shell to use the confluent virtual machine as your docker host.

eval $(docker-machine env confluent)

Local Host entries

A Kafka broker advertises the hostname of the machine it's running on. This requires the hostname to be resolvable on the client machine. You will need to add a host entry for your docker machine to your hosts file.

The command docker-machine ip <machine name> will return the ip address of your docker machine.

> docker-machine ip confluent
192.168.99.100

Edit your hosts file and add a host entry for the docker machine.

192.168.99.100  confluent

Launch Images

cd examples/fullstack
docker-compose up

Connecting

Now all of your services will be available at the host confluent.

Building Images

For convenience, a build.sh script is provided to build all variants of images. This includes:

confluent-platform - Confluent Platform base images, with all Confluent Platform packages installed. There are separate images for each Scala version. These images are tagged as confluent/platform-$SCALA_VERSION, with the default (2.10.4) also tagged as confluent/platform.
confluent/zookeeper - starts Zookeeper on port 2181.
confluent/kafka - starts Kafka on 9092.
confluent/schema-registry - starts the Schema Registry on 8081.
confluent/rest-proxy - starts the Kafka REST Proxy on 8082.
confluent-tools - provides tools with a few links to other containers for commonly used tools.

Note that all services are built only using the default Scala version. When run as services, the Scala version should not matter. If you need a specific Scala version, use the corresponding confluent/platform-$SCALA_VERSION image as your FROM line in your derived Dockerfile.

A second script, push.sh, will push the generated images to Docker Hub. First you'll need to be logged in:

docker login --username=yourhubusername --password=yourpassword --email=youremail@company.com

then execute the script.

confluentinc/docker-images