Bruce is a producer daemon for Apache Kafka. Bruce simplifies clients that send messages to Kafka, freeing them from the complexity of direct interaction with the Kafka cluster. Specifically, it handles the details of:
- Routing messages to the proper brokers, and spreading the load evenly across multiple partitions for a given topic
- Waiting for acknowledgements, and resending messages as necessary due to communication failures or Kafka-reported errors
- Buffering messages to handle transient load spikes and Kafka-related problems
- Tracking message discards when serious problems occur; Providing web-based discard reporting and status monitoring interfaces
- Batching and compressing messages in a configurable manner for improved performance
- Optional rate limiting of messages on a per-topic basis.
Bruce runs on each individual host that communicates with Kafka, receiving messages from local clients over a UNIX domain datagram socket. Clients write messages to Bruce's socket in a simple binary format. Once a client has written a message, no further interaction with Bruce is required. From that point onward, Bruce takes full responsibility for reliable message delivery. Bruce serves as a single intake point for a Kafka cluster, receiving messages from diverse clients regardless of what programming language a client is written in. The following client support for sending messages to Bruce is currently available:
- C and C++
- Java
- Other JVM-based languages (Scala, Clojure, Groovy, etc.) via Bruce's Java support
- Python
- Ruby
- PHP
- Perl
- Shell scripting
Code contributions for clients in other programming languages are much appreciated. Technical details on how to send messages to Bruce are provided here. Bruce runs on Linux, and has been tested on CentOS versions 7 and 6.5, and Ubuntu versions 14.04.1 LTS and 13.10. Bruce requires at least version 0.8 of Kafka.
To get Bruce working, you need to set up a build environment. A good first step is to set up the Google Test Framework, which Bruce uses for its unit tests. The remaining steps differ depending on which Linux distribution you are using. Currently, instructions are available for CentOS 7, CentOS 6.5, and Ubuntu (14.04.1 LTS and 13.10).
Once your build environment is set up, the next step is to build and install Bruce.
Simple instructions for running Bruce with a basic configuration can be found here.
Information on how to send messages to Bruce can be found here.
Information on status monitoring can be found here.
Before going into more details on Bruce's configuration options, it is helpful to have an understanding of Bruce's design, which is described here.
Full details of Bruce's configuration options are provided here.
Information that may help with troubleshooting is provided here.
Information for developers interested in making custom modifications or contributing code to Bruce is provided here.
If you have questions about Bruce, contact Dave Peterson (dave@dspeterson.com).
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