Conquer Apache Kafka 2025 – Dive into Data Streaming Dominance!

A follower in Kafka's architecture is a type of broker that replicates the data of a leader broker but does not handle read or write requests from clients. The design of Kafka’s architecture separates the responsibilities of brokers to maintain high throughput and availability. The leader broker is responsible for processing all read and write requests for a given partition, while followers simply replicate the leader's data to ensure that there are backups of that data and to provide fault tolerance.

The fact that a follower does not handle client requests allows Kafka to efficiently manage load and improve performance, as read and write operations are handled exclusively by leaders. This structure also simplifies the implementation of replication and ensures that data remains consistent across the cluster.

Other options refer to responsibilities that are not aligned with what a follower does. For example, managing data retention settings is typically a function of the entire Kafka topic configuration rather than the specific role of follower brokers. Similarly, creating topics is an administrative function handled by brokers as a whole, not limited to followers. While it is true that a follower can become a leader if needed, this is a part of the leader election process and does not describe the primary function of a follower in the typical operation of Kafka.