I know I’ve already asked everyone’s opinion/experience with KRaft. Seems like not too many people have experimented yet… Let’s change that!
Here’s a great write-up of KRaft, how it works in place or Zookeeper, and an easy guide to get started on your own!
Why should I try it out? I know it’s a bit of a chicken and egg problem but as long as production is run with Zookeeper I don’t know why I should give it a try.
At some point, Kafka will be an entirely Zookeeperless system, so this will eventually catch up with you. The time will come when production Zookeeper will eventually not exist anymore, but of course that that doesn’t mean you need to be playing with preview versions. We are always excited about trying out new things, but you’re the one responsible for a production deployment, so your schedule wins over our enthusiasm. 
I can run the all-in-one demo in KRaft mode, but then I can’t connect to it from localhost with kafka-topics or any other client.
Are you using Docker for Mac maybe? The KAFKA_LISTENERS and KAFKA_ADVERTIZED_LISTENERS expect docker to be reachable via localhost. Depending on how you set thing up, that might need to be changed.
Yes, I am using a Mac. I have no problem running the Dockerfiles for the other cp-all-in-one variants that include Zookeeper. I just can’t figure out what’s wrong with the KRaft configuration. I tried adding ports 29092 and 29093 to the ports list, similar to the config in the non-KRaft version that works. Didn’t help.
Here’s my current config for broker. Please let me know if you can spot anything that might need tweaking.
broker:
image: confluentinc/cp-kafka:7.0.0
hostname: broker
container_name: broker
ports:
- "29093:29093"
- "29092:29092"
- "9092:9092"
- "9101:9101"
environment:
KAFKA_BROKER_ID: 1
KAFKA_LISTENER_SECURITY_PROTOCOL_MAP: 'CONTROLLER:PLAINTEXT,PLAINTEXT:PLAINTEXT,PLAINTEXT_HOST:PLAINTEXT'
KAFKA_ADVERTISED_LISTENERS: 'PLAINTEXT://broker:29092,PLAINTEXT_HOST://localhost:9092'
KAFKA_OFFSETS_TOPIC_REPLICATION_FACTOR: 1
KAFKA_GROUP_INITIAL_REBALANCE_DELAY_MS: 0
KAFKA_TRANSACTION_STATE_LOG_MIN_ISR: 1
KAFKA_TRANSACTION_STATE_LOG_REPLICATION_FACTOR: 1
KAFKA_JMX_PORT: 9101
KAFKA_JMX_HOSTNAME: localhost
KAFKA_PROCESS_ROLES: 'broker,controller'
KAFKA_NODE_ID: 1
KAFKA_CONTROLLER_QUORUM_VOTERS: '1@broker:29093'
KAFKA_LISTENERS: 'PLAINTEXT://broker:29092,CONTROLLER://broker:29093,PLAINTEXT_HOST://localhost:9092'
KAFKA_INTER_BROKER_LISTENER_NAME: 'PLAINTEXT'
KAFKA_CONTROLLER_LISTENER_NAMES: 'CONTROLLER'
KAFKA_LOG_DIRS: '/tmp/kraft-combined-logs'
volumes:
- ./update_run.sh:/tmp/update_run.sh
command: "bash -c 'if [ ! -f /tmp/update_run.sh ]; then echo \"ERROR: Did you forget the update_run.sh file that came with this docker-compose.yml file?\" && exit 1 ; else /tmp/update_run.sh && /etc/confluent/docker/run ; fi'"