Conquer Apache Kafka 2025 – Dive into Data Streaming Dominance!

In Apache Kafka, the component that handles leader election is Zookeeper. Zookeeper is a distributed coordination service that provides functionalities such as configuration management, leader election, and distributed synchronization.

When a Kafka topic is created, it is divided into partitions, and each partition must have one leader broker responsible for processing all reads and writes associated with that partition. Zookeeper facilitates the leader election process by maintaining metadata information about the brokers and the partitions. When the current leader fails or comes offline, Zookeeper helps to elect a new leader from the list of available brokers, ensuring that the system continues to operate with minimal downtime.

This role of Zookeeper is crucial for maintaining the availability and reliability of Kafka clusters since leader election ensures that there is always a broker available to handle requests for each partition. Producers and consumers, while integral to Kafka’s messaging system, do not play a role in leader election; instead, they interact with brokers based on the current leader's availability.