Kafka-less mode for Confluent Control Center

You can run Control Center without a bootstrap Kafka cluster when you operate in CMF-enabled management mode. This configuration allows Control Center to remain stateless in environments that do not require Kafka-based state storage, such as those used only to monitor Flink clusters.

With Kafka-less mode, you can monitor and manage Flink clusters without provisioning a bootstrap Kafka cluster. This mode is useful for Confluent Platform Flink-only deployments where you use Control Center exclusively for Flink cluster management.

Configuration

To run Control Center in Kafka-less mode, configure the following required properties:

# Required: Enable CMF mode
confluent.controlcenter.cmf.enable=true

# Required: Enable management mode
confluent.controlcenter.mode.enable=management

# Required: Disable Prometheus metrics
confluent.controlcenter.prometheus.enable=false

# Omit bootstrap.servers entirely
# bootstrap.servers=

Requirements and constraints

Meet these requirements to run Control Center in Kafka-less mode:

  • Enable CMF mode: Set confluent.controlcenter.cmf.enable=true

  • Enable management mode: Set confluent.controlcenter.mode.enable=management

  • Disable Prometheus metrics: Set confluent.controlcenter.prometheus.enable=false

  • Omit bootstrap servers: Remove the bootstrap.servers property from the configuration. Do not set this property to an empty string.

Important

This feature currently supports only configurations that do not use role-based access control (RBAC).

In Kafka-less mode, Control Center operates in a stateless manner. The interface does not display monitoring or metrics information that requires Kafka-based state storage.

Confluent for Kubernetes (CFK) support

When you use Kafka-less mode with Confluent for Kubernetes (CFK), complete the following additional requirements and configuration steps.

Version requirements

CFK version 3.2.0 and later support empty bootstrap servers. Ensure your deployment meets this requirement before you configure Kafka-less mode.

Configure the Confluent Control Center custom resource

Add the following annotation to the Confluent Control Center custom resource to disable the Kafka dependency:

metadata:
  annotations:
    platform.confluent.io/disable-kafka-dependency: "true"  # default is false

This annotation instructs CFK to skip the Kafka dependency check when it deploys Control Center.

Configure dependencies

In the Confluent Control Center custom resource, omit Kafka from spec.dependencies altogether.

spec:
  dependencies: {}

Use cases

Kafka-less mode is ideal for the following deployment scenarios:

  • For Flink-only deployments, organizations that use Confluent Platform exclusively for Apache Flink® and do not require Kafka clusters can run Control Center to manage Flink environments without the overhead of a bootstrap Kafka cluster.

  • Use this mode to simplify infrastructure by removing the need for a Kafka cluster when you only need Flink management capabilities.

  • This mode provides a lightweight option for development and testing environments focused on Flink workloads.