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Apache Kafka: Distributed Messaging

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Kafka: the distributed commit log

Kafka is not a message queue — it's a distributed commit log. Producers append records to topics; consumers read at their own pace. Records are retained on disk for days or weeks, enabling replay, multiple consumer groups, and time-travel debugging.

Topics are split into partitions — each partition is an ordered, append-only log replicated across multiple brokers for fault tolerance.

Packets in motion — click to inspect:

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