Apache Kafka is an open-source distributed event streaming platform designed for high-performance data pipelines, streaming analytics, and data integration. It is widely used by organizations for building real-time data processing applications. Kafka operates as a distributed messaging system, allowing for the efficient handling of large volumes of data in a fault-tolerant manner.

Kafka’s architecture consists of several key components: producers, consumers, brokers, and topics. Producers are responsible for publishing messages to topics, while consumers subscribe to these topics to process the messages. Brokers are the servers that store and manage the messages, and topics are categories that organize the messages within Kafka. This structure enables Kafka to maintain high throughput and scalability, making it suitable for various applications, including real-time analytics and data integration tasks ²³⁵.

If you’re interested in setting up Kafka or learning more about its features, there are many resources available to guide you through the process.