# How to Safely Run Multiple Kafka Connect Pods on Kubernetes Using Strimzi?

**URL:** <https://forum.confluent.io/t/how-to-safely-run-multiple-kafka-connect-pods-on-kubernetes-using-strimzi/38118>\
**Category:** Managed Connectors\
**Created:** [16 September 2025 22:36 UTC](https://forum.confluent.io/t/how-to-safely-run-multiple-kafka-connect-pods-on-kubernetes-using-strimzi/38118 "2025-09-16T22:36:29Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jpfsemp](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.confluent.io/jpfsemp/32/5171_2.png) [@jpfsemp](https://forum.confluent.io/u/jpfsemp)\
**Post date:** [16 September 2025 22:36 UTC](https://forum.confluent.io/t/how-to-safely-run-multiple-kafka-connect-pods-on-kubernetes-using-strimzi/38118/1 "2025-09-16T22:36:29Z")

</div>

Hello community, how are you?

I’m new to Kafka and still learning. But I’m working on deploying Kafka Connect.

A question came up.

I’m deploying my Kafka Connect on Kubernetes and want it to have at least two pods running.

I saw some required fields in this documentation:

> **[How to Use Kafka Connect - Get Started | Confluent Documentation](https://docs.confluent.io/platform/current/connect/userguide.html#distributed-mode)**
>
> This document provides concepts and instructions for getting started with Kafka Connect.

I have the following questions:

The replicas must have the same group.id to be part of the same cluster, right?

In this documentation,

> **[Deploying and Managing (0.47.0)](https://strimzi.io/docs/operators/latest/deploying#con-config-kafka-connect-multiple-instances-str)**
>
> Strimzi provides a way to run an Apache Kafka cluster on Kubernetes in various deployment configurations.

> "Unless you modify these default settings, each instance connecting to the same Kafka cluster is deployed with the same values. In practice, this means all instances form a cluster and use the same internal topics.
> 
> Multiple instances attempting to use the same internal topics will cause unexpected errors, so you must change the values ​​of these properties for each instance.  
> Multiple instances attempting to use the same internal topics will cause unexpected errors, so you must change the values ​​of these properties for each instance."

Does this mean that if I run two pods with the same group.id and the same topic configuration, there could be a problem?

I’m quite confused. Could someone explain to me how to run two or more Kafka Connect pods on Kubernetes without problems?

Thank you very much for your attention.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mmuehlbeyer](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.confluent.io/mmuehlbeyer/32/1088_2.png) [@mmuehlbeyer](https://forum.confluent.io/u/mmuehlbeyer)\
**Post date:** [17 September 2025 07:15 UTC](https://forum.confluent.io/t/how-to-safely-run-multiple-kafka-connect-pods-on-kubernetes-using-strimzi/38118/2 "2025-09-17T07:15:09Z")

</div>

hey @jpfsemp

welcome 🙂

I’m not fully in the details of strimzi, though having 2 pods/workers should not harm your setup.

kafka connect is designed to run in a distributed way on several nodes/servers.

therefore it should be possible to just increase the replicas to a value greater than “1!

> <https://github.com/strimzi/strimzi-kafka-operator/blob/1a867d3005be035ce3085f5bfdba363325a2db6f/examples/connect/kafka-connect.yaml>

check also this one here:  
[https://itnext.io/step-by-step-guide-deploying-kafka-connect-via-strimzi-operator-on-kubernetes-6357c123abe9](https://itnext.io/step-by-step-guide-deploying-kafka-connect-via-strimzi-operator-on-kubernetes-6357c123abe9)

hth,

michael

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jpfsemp](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.confluent.io/jpfsemp/32/5171_2.png) [@jpfsemp](https://forum.confluent.io/u/jpfsemp)\
**Post date:** [17 September 2025 12:59 UTC](https://forum.confluent.io/t/how-to-safely-run-multiple-kafka-connect-pods-on-kubernetes-using-strimzi/38118/3 "2025-09-17T12:59:07Z")

</div>

Thank you so much for your feedback.  
It helped me a lot. Good luck!!

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/uploads/confluentcommunity/original/1X/c49438c90c9df282e9996fdf6971be890c71b65a.svg) [@system](https://forum.confluent.io/u/system)\
**Post date:** [24 September 2025 12:59 UTC](https://forum.confluent.io/t/how-to-safely-run-multiple-kafka-connect-pods-on-kubernetes-using-strimzi/38118/4 "2025-09-24T12:59:35Z")

</div>

This topic was automatically closed 7 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.