Manage Kafka Clusters on Confluent Cloud

Use this topic to understand and mange clusters in Confluent Cloud, using the Confluent Cloud Console, Confluent CLI, and REST API.

Cluster management concepts

Apache Kafka® clusters in Confluent Cloud are different from Kafka clusters in general in that Confluent offers a fully managed service. Use the following concepts to learn more.

Basics

You choose from different types of clusters for use in development, production, and high-traffic workloads. Confluent Cloud is available from all the major cloud providers in regions around the world and provides access to Kafka cluster and topic configuration settings. For more information, see the following topics:

Fault Tolerance
Confluent Cloud provides a centralized global control plane and a distributed collection of servers that operate as a cluster. Clusters can span data centers or cloud provider availability zones (AZs) and provide highly scalable and fault-tolerant systems that support mission-critical applications. For more information, see Resilience in Confluent Cloud.
Dedicated Clusters

Dedicated clusters in Confluent Cloud support single-tenant deployments with a 99.95% uptime SLA for Single-Zone, and 99.99% for Multi-Zone, options for private networking and self-managed keys. Use Confluent Unit for Kafka (CKU) to expand and shrink your Dedicated cluster and client quotas to support multi-tenant workloads. For more information, see the following topics:

For more information about private networking, see Networking in Confluent Cloud.

How to work with clusters

Use this section to create, delete, and update clusters.

Requirements

  • Operator or admin access to a Confluent Cloud environment.
  • API requests must include an authorization header with an API key and secret. For more information, see Authentication in the Confluent Cloud API reference.

Create clusters

You can create clusters using the Confluent Cloud Console, Confluent CLI, and REST API. For a description of cluster types and resource quotas for clusters, see Confluent Cloud Cluster Types and Service Quotas for Confluent Cloud.

Considerations:

  • Cloud provider, region, and availability cannot be changed after provisioning a cluster.

  • Cluster name (display_name) is a friendly name with the following requirements:

    • Use 64 characters or less
    • Use whitespace, Unicode letters, numbers, and the following special characters: Period (.), Comma (,), Ampersand (&), Underscore (_), Plus (+), Bar (|), Open square bracket ([), Close square bracket (]), Slash (/), Dash (-)

    Tip

    The business use of a cluster is a good choice for cluster name.

Choose a cluster type.

  1. Navigate to the clusters page for your environment. If this is your fist cluster, click Create cluster on my own. Otherwise, click + Add cluster.

  2. Select Standard or Basic and click Begin configuration.

  3. Select a cloud provider tile, Region, and Availability and click Continue.

  4. Specify Cluster name.

  5. Review your configuration and click Launch cluster.

    To verify or add a payment method, or use a promotional code, click Review payment method.

View clusters

You can view details of a single cluster and lists multiple clusters using the Confluent Cloud Console, Confluent CLI, and REST API.

View a list of clusters

Use this procedure to list clusters.

To list clusters

  1. From the Administration menu, select Environments.

  2. Select an environment.

    A list of clusters appears.

View a cluster

Use this procedure to get details about a cluster.

To list a cluster

  1. Navigate to the clusters page for your environment.
  2. Select Cluster Settings to see details about your cluster. To see capacity details, click Capacity.

Update clusters

You can update a cluster using the Confluent Cloud Console, Confluent CLI, and REST API.

Considerations:

  • You can update cluster type, cluster names and number of CKUs (Dedicated clusters only)
  • Clusters cannot be downgraded from Standard to Basic
  • Upgrades from Basic to Standard must be made on their own, with no other requests
  • Shrink operations can reduce the capacity of the cluster one (1) CKU at a time

For more information about resizing clusters, see Expand and shrink.

  1. Navigate to the clusters page for your environment.
  2. Select Cluster Settings.
  3. In Identification, click the edit icon.
  4. Enter the new name in Cluster name and click Save changes.

To resize Dedicated clusters with Cloud Console, see Expand a Dedicated Kafka Cluster and Shrink a Dedicated Kafka Cluster.

Delete clusters

You can delete a cluster using the Confluent Cloud Console, Confluent CLI, and REST API. You cannot restore a deleted cluster.

To delete a cluster

  1. Navigate to the clusters page for your environment.
  2. Select Cluster Settings.
  3. Click Delete cluster, enter the cluster name, and click Continue.

Confluent retains deleted clusters for a brief period after you delete them. For more information, contact Confluent Cloud Support.