Billing needs every order the shop sends. Build the whole pipeline.
Lesson · Kafka topicsKafka Machine
Learn Kafka by playing
- Place the pieces Brokers, topics, consumers and Kafka Streams apps. Each one costs coins.
- Wire them Drag from a handle to connect a producer, a topic and the apps that read it.
- Press Run Messages flow by Kafka's own rules. The missions tell you whether your machine held.
The 14 levels
Basics
The shop sends 10 orders a second. A consumer reads 4 a second.
Lesson · Consumer groups and offsetsAnalytics copied Billing’s config. Both teams need every order, without falling behind.
Lesson · Consumer groups and offsetsBilling must see each customer’s events in the order they happened, and keep up.
Lesson · Kafka producers and message keysProduction
Customer A sends 70% of the orders. Each order’s events must stay in order.
Lesson · Kafka producers and message keysAt 8 s, the disk of the busiest broker dies. Billing can’t lose an order.
Lesson · Topic replicationAnalytics deploys at 10 s and needs every order since the start. Billing must keep up.
Lesson · Consumer auto offset resetStreams
Shipping and Email only want paid orders. Filter in each app, or once with Kafka Streams?
Lesson · Kafka Streams stateless operationsEvery order needs its customer’s address. The orders topic belongs to another team.
Lesson · Kafka Streams joinsPeak traffic, a hot customer, a dying disk at 12 s, and Shipping wants paid orders only.
Lesson · The Kafkademy Master trackArchitecture
At 2 s, the data team replays last week’s orders into the shared cluster. Fraud checks must not fall behind.
Lesson · Kafka monitoring and operationsA partner reads your orders from their own network. Your three brokers only have private addresses.
Lesson · Kafka advertised listenersRegion east goes dark at 9 s. Billing must carry on from region west, without losing or repeating much.
Lesson · Kafka multi-cluster and MirrorMakerThe old cluster is switched off at 10 s. Move the shop and billing to the new one: nothing lost, no order more than 4 s late.
Lesson · Kafka multi-cluster and MirrorMakerIs Kafka Machine free?
Yes. It runs in your browser, with no account and nothing to install. Your progress and your machines stay in your browser.
Do I need to know Kafka to play?
No. The first levels start from an empty cluster and teach topics, partitions and consumer groups as you go. Each level links to the Kafkademy lesson behind it.
How close is it to real Kafka?
It follows Kafka's defaults: one consumer per partition in a group, ordering within a partition, acks=all, a new group starting from the latest offset, replication and leader election. A few things are simplified on purpose, like a fixed hash instead of murmur2 and a fixed one-second election.
Can I share my result?
Yes. When you solve a level, share a link: its preview shows the level, the coins your machine costs and, if you want, your first name. Solve all 14 levels to get the Kafka Machine Architect badge for your LinkedIn profile.
Apache Kafka, Kafka and the Kafka logo are trademarks of the Apache Software Foundation. Kafka Machine is made by Conduktor and isn't endorsed by the Apache Software Foundation.