What problem does it solve? Setting up Apache Kafka on Kubernetes involves many moving parts: operator installation, cluster CRDs, topic management, and connectivity testing. This Skill provides a complete, step-by-step workflow for deploying production-ready Kafka clusters with the Strimzi operator, eliminating guesswork and misconfiguration. ## Core Features & Use Cases - Operator & Cluster Deployment: Install the Strimzi operator and create single-node (development) or 3-node KRaft-mode production clusters with persistent storage, TLS listeners, and resource limits. - Topic Management: Create and inspect Kafka topics declaratively via KafkaTopic CRDs or the kafka-topics CLI inside the cluster. - Testing & Troubleshooting: Run console producers/consumers, enable Prometheus metrics, and diagnose common failures like pending PVCs, OOMKilled pods, and wrong bootstrap URLs. - Use Case: You are building an event-driven microservices platform and need a Kafka backbone. Use this Skill to stand up a 3-broker cluster, create a task-events topic, and verify message flow before connecting your FastAPI or Dapr services. ## Quick Start Ask the assistant to deploy a Kafka cluster on Kubernetes using the Strimzi operator and verify it with a test producer and consumer.
