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I have seen some similar questions as follows:

www.quora.com/What-is-the-actual-role-of-Zookeeper-in-Kafka-What-benefits-will-I-miss-out-on-if-I-don%E2%80%99t-use-Zookeeper-and-Kafka-together

Is Zookeeper a must for Kafka?

But I want to know the latest information about this question.

What is the actual role of ZooKeeper in Kafka 2.1?

Karan Khanna
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jessey
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  • The **latest information** is still available at http://kafka.apache.org. Can you explain what isn't clear there so it can be updated accordingly? – OneCricketeer Jan 08 '19 at 19:48
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    @cricket_007 [kafka.apache.org](http://kafka.apache.org/) is a great site. As I know, the main chapters about Zookeeper as follows:[http://kafka.apache.org/documentation/#zk](http://kafka.apache.org/documentation/#zk),[http://kafka.apache.org/documentation/#zk_authz](http://kafka.apache.org/documentation/#zk_authz).And the other information about Zookeeper is scattered.Maybe, the chapter [http://kafka.apache.org/documentation/#design](http://kafka.apache.org/documentation/#design) will be better, if there are a independent paragraph, which focus on the relationship between Kafka and Zookeeper. – jessey Jan 09 '19 at 07:57
  • That `#zk` link is for the Operations, not Implementation, the section above. This goes through the design of Zookeeper data that is stored by Kafka https://kafka.apache.org/documentation/#impl_zookeeper. I agree they could be combined / referenced better. Is there anything else you see as missing? – OneCricketeer Jan 09 '19 at 19:12
  • @cricket_007 Thanks for your understanding.Everything else is awesome:) – jessey Jan 10 '19 at 01:43

1 Answers1

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Zookeeper is required to run a Kafka Cluster.

It is used by Kafka brokers to perform elections (controller and topic leaders), to store topic metadata and various other things (ACLs, dynamic broker configs, quotas, Producer Ids)

Since Kafka 0.9, clients don't require access to Zookeeper, only brokers rely on it.

OneCricketeer
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Mickael Maison
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    I would say "(still) required" :) – OneCricketeer Jan 08 '19 at 19:46
  • I know some discussions have started but I spoke a couple of months ago with several committers and completely removing Zookeeper did not seem very close. – Mickael Maison Jan 09 '19 at 13:12
  • Looking over the KIP's, I would say it's at least being abstracted away enough though the AdminClient interface. Eventually all the CLI tools should only need Kafka connections. With enough abstraction, Zookeeper could probably be swapped out for something else – OneCricketeer Jan 09 '19 at 18:08