Use Confluent Cloud as the bootstrap cluster for Confluent Control Center

If you use self-managed Kafka Connect or ksqlDB clusters to move data between Confluent Cloud and on-premises systems, you can use Control Center with a Confluent Cloud bootstrap Kafka cluster to manage them.

Important

This configuration is supported only in Reduced infrastructure mode, which you set with confluent.controlcenter.mode.enable=management. Control Center doesn’t collect metrics or display monitoring data for a Confluent Cloud bootstrap cluster.

On Confluent for Kubernetes, omit spec.services and the prometheusClient and alertManagerClient dependencies, and set the properties in the following section under spec.configOverrides.server. CFK then deploys Control Center without Prometheus or Alertmanager. Ansible-based deployments install and start Prometheus and Alertmanager on the Control Center host even in this configuration. These components remain unused. Override confluent.controlcenter.prometheus.enable to false in control_center_next_gen_custom_properties.

Configure Control Center to use Confluent Cloud

To configure Control Center to use Confluent Cloud as the bootstrap cluster, set the following properties in control-center.properties:

# Confluent Cloud bootstrap cluster
bootstrap.servers=<ccloud_bootstrap_server>:9092

# Required: Run in Reduced infrastructure mode
confluent.controlcenter.mode.enable=management

# Required: Turn off Prometheus in Reduced infrastructure mode
confluent.controlcenter.prometheus.enable=false

# Connect to Confluent Cloud using a Confluent Cloud API key and secret
confluent.controlcenter.streams.security.protocol=SASL_SSL
confluent.controlcenter.streams.sasl.mechanism=PLAIN
confluent.controlcenter.streams.sasl.jaas.config=org.apache.kafka.common.security.plain.PlainLoginModule required username="<api_key>" password="<api_secret>";
confluent.controlcenter.streams.ssl.endpoint.identification.algorithm=https

# On-premises Kafka Connect cluster
confluent.controlcenter.connect.<connect_cluster_name>.cluster=http://localhost:8083

# On-premises ksqlDB cluster
confluent.controlcenter.ksql.<ksql_cluster_name>.url=http://localhost:8088

# Schema Registry: use one of the following
# Confluent Cloud Schema Registry (include the :443 port)
confluent.controlcenter.schema.registry.url=https://<ccloud_sr_endpoint>:443
confluent.controlcenter.schema.registry.basic.auth.credentials.source=USER_INFO
confluent.controlcenter.schema.registry.basic.auth.user.info=<sr_api_key>:<sr_api_secret>

# On-premises Schema Registry cluster
# confluent.controlcenter.schema.registry.url=http://localhost:8081

Note

Include the :443 port in the Confluent Cloud Schema Registry URL. Without an explicit port, Control Center checks the Schema Registry endpoint on port 80 and reports it as down.

For a Confluent Cloud API key and secret, see Use API Keys to Control Access in Confluent Cloud.

Configure CFK to use Confluent Cloud

On Confluent for Kubernetes, set the properties under spec.configOverrides.server in the ControlCenter custom resource. Define the Confluent Cloud bootstrap cluster and API key under spec.dependencies.kafka. The following example omits spec.services, prometheusClient, and alertManagerClient so that CFK doesn’t deploy Prometheus or Alertmanager:

spec:
  configOverrides:
    server:
      - confluent.controlcenter.mode.enable=management
      - confluent.controlcenter.prometheus.enable=false
  dependencies:
    kafka:
      bootstrapEndpoint: <ccloud_bootstrap_server>:9092
      authentication:
        type: plain
        jaasConfig:
          secretRef: <secret_name>
      tls:
        enabled: true
        ignoreTrustStoreConfig: true

The secret must contain a plain.txt key with the Confluent Cloud API key and secret in the following format:

username=<api_key>
password=<api_secret>

Use Confluent Cloud as the bootstrap cluster for Confluent Control Center

Configure Control Center to use Confluent Cloud

Configure CFK to use Confluent Cloud

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