How to Install Apache Kafka on Mac?

1. Install Java JDK version 11

2. Download Apache Kafka from https://kafka.apache.org/downloads under 'Binary Downloads'

3. Extract the contents on your Mac

4. Start Zookeeper using the binaries

5. Start Kafka using the binaries in another process

6. Setup the $PATH environment variables for easy access to the Kafka binaries

To install Apache Kafka on Mac, Java 11 is the only prerequisite.

1. Navigate to Amazon Corretto 11 download page (the Amazon distribution of OpenJDK 11) install amazon-corretto-11-x64-macos-jdk.pkg

2. Double click on the downloaded file and proceed with the installation steps.

3. You have successfully installed Java JDK 11. You may delete the .pkg file.

Please follow the instructions here to verify your installation of Amazon Corretto 11. Instructions on how to set the default version of Java on a Mac can be found here.

Upon completion, you should get a similar output when doing java -version:

1. Download the latest version of Apache Kafka from https://kafka.apache.org/downloads under Binary downloads.

2. Click on any of the binary downloads (it is preferred to choose the most recent Scala version - example 2.13). For this illustration, we will assume version 2.13-3.0.0.

3. Download and extract the contents (double click in the Finder) to a directory of your choice, for example ~/kafka_2.13-3.0.0 .

4. Navigate to the root of the Apache Kafka folder and open a Terminal. Or Open a Terminal and navigate to the root directory of Apache Kafka. For this example, we will assume that the Kafka download is expanded into the ~/kafka_2.13-3.0.0 directory.

Start Zookeeper

Apache Kafka depends on Zookeeper for cluster management. Hence, prior to starting Kafka, Zookeeper has to be started. There is no need to explicitly install Zookeeper, as it comes included with Apache Kafka.

Make sure your JAVA_HOME environment variable is set first, as instructed in the Install Java section, so that Java 11 is used when doing java -version

From the root of Apache Kafka, run the following command to start Zookeeper:

Start Apache Kafka

Open another Terminal window and run the following command from the root of Apache Kafka to start Apache Kafka.

Ensure to keep both terminal windows opened, otherwise you will shut down Kafka or Zookeeper.

Kafka is now started, congratulations!

In order to easily access the Kafka binaries, you can edit your PATH variable by adding the following line (edit the content to your system) to your system run commands (for example ~/.zshrc if you use zshrc):

PATH="$PATH:/Users/stephanemaarek/kafka_2.13-3.0.0/bin"

This ensures that you can now run the kafka commands without prefixing them.

After reloading your terminal, the following should work from any directory

For Zookeeper:

• edit the zookeeper.properties file at ~/kafka_2.13-3.0.0/config/zookeeper.properties and set the following to your heart's desire dataDir=/your/path/to/data/zookeeper

• start Zookeeper using the update zookeeper.properties file as shown above

• you can also make a copy of the zookeeper.properties file anywhere in your computer and edit that file instead, and reference it in the Zookeeper start command shown above

For Kafka:

• edit the server.properties file at ~/kafka_2.13-3.0.0/config/server.properties and set the following to your heart's desire log.dirs=/your/path/to/data/kafka

• start Zookeeper using the update server.properties file as shown above

• you can also make a copy of the server.properties file anywhere in your computer and edit that file instead, and reference it in the Zookeeper start command shown above