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Kafka Connect Azure Event Hubs Source Connector¶

The Azure Event Hubs Source Connector is used to poll data from Azure Event Hubs and persist the data to an Apache Kafka® topic.

Install the Azure Event Hubs Connector¶

You can install this connector by using the Confluent Hub client (recommended) or you can manually download the ZIP file.

Install the connector using Confluent Hub¶

Prerequisite: Confluent Hub Client must be installed. This is installed by default with Confluent Enterprise.

Navigate to your Confluent Platform installation directory and run this command to install the latest (latest) connector version. The connector must be installed on every machine where Connect will be run.

confluent-hub install confluentinc/kafka-connect-azure-event-hubs:latest

You can install a specific version by replacing latest with a version number. For example:

confluent-hub install confluentinc/kafka-connect-azure-event-hubs:1.1.4

Install Connector Manually¶

Download and extract the ZIP file for your connector and then follow the manual connector installation instructions.

License¶

You can use this connector for a 30-day trial period without a license key.

After 30 days, this connector is available under a Confluent enterprise license. Confluent issues enterprise license keys to subscribers, along with providing enterprise-level support for Confluent Platform and your connectors. If you are a subscriber, please contact Confluent Support at support@confluent.io for more information.

See Confluent Platform license for license properties and License topic configuration for information about the license topic.

Usage Notes¶

Azure Event Hubs use Shared Access Signature (SAS) for authentication and authorization. For more information, see the Event Hubs Authentication and Security Model Overview.

REST-based example¶

This configuration is used typically along with distributed workers. Write the following JSON to connector.json, configure all of the required values, and use the command below to post the configuration to one the distributed connect workers. Refer to REST API for more information about the Kafka Connect.

Connect Distributed REST example:

 {
   "name": "EventHubsSourceConnector1",
   "config": {
     "confluent.topic.bootstrap.servers": "< Required Configuration >",
     "connector.class": "io.confluent.connect.azure.eventhubs.EventHubsSourceConnector",
     "kafka.topic": "< Required Configuration >",
     "tasks.max": "1",
     "max.events": "< Optional Configuration >",
     "azure.eventhubs.sas.keyname": "< Required Configuration >",
     "azure.eventhubs.sas.key": "< Required Configuration >",
     "azure.eventhubs.namespace": "< Required Configuration >",
     "azure.eventhubs.hub.name": "< Required Configuration >"
   }
 }

Use curl to post the configuration to one of the Kafka Connect Workers. Change http://localhost:8083/ to the endpoint of one of your Kafka Connect workers.

Create a new connector:

curl -s -X POST -H 'Content-Type: application/json' --data @connector.json http://localhost:8083/connectors

Update an existing connector:

curl -s -X PUT -H 'Content-Type: application/json' --data @connector.json http://localhost:8083/connectors/EventHubsSourceConnector1/config

Quick Start¶

The Azure Event Hubs source connector is used to poll data from an Event Hub, and write into a Kafka topic. Before you begin, you need to have an Azure subscription with the privilege to create resource group and service. Using the Azure portal, create a namespace and event hub. Then produce some events to the hub using Event Hubs API.

Preliminary Setup¶

Prerequisites

Confluent Platform
Confluent CLI (requires separate installation)

Navigate to your Confluent Platform installation directory and run the following command to install the latest connector version:

confluent-hub install confluentinc/kafka-connect-azure-event-hubs:latest

You can install a specific version by replacing latest with a version number. For example:

confluent-hub install confluentinc/kafka-connect-azure-event-hubs:1.1.1-preview

Adding a new connector plugin requires restarting Connect. Use the Confluent CLI command to restart Connect:

$ confluent stop connect && confluent start connect
Using CONFLUENT_CURRENT: /Users/username/Sandbox/confluent-snapshots/var/confluent.NuZHxXfq
Starting zookeeper
zookeeper is [UP]
Starting kafka
kafka is [UP]
Starting schema-registry
schema-registry is [UP]
Starting kafka-rest
kafka-rest is [UP]
Starting connect
connect is [UP]

Check if the Azure Event Hubs plugin has been installed correctly and picked up by the plugin loader:

$ curl -sS localhost:8083/connector-plugins | jq .[].class | grep eventhubs
"io.confluent.connect.azure.eventhubs.EventHubsSourceConnector"

Azure Event Hubs Setup¶

Follow the official tutorial, create a resource group, then a namespace, then a event hub, and then produce events to the hub. The producer will need SAS info to get access to event hub.

Source Connector Configuration¶

Start the services using the Confluent CLI commands:

confluent start

Create a configuration file named event-hubs-source-config.json with the following contents.

{
  "name": "EventHubsSourceConnector1",
  "config": {
    "confluent.topic.bootstrap.servers": "localhost:9092",
    "connector.class": "io.confluent.connect.azure.eventhubs.EventHubsSourceConnector",
    "kafka.topic": "event_hub_topic",
    "tasks.max": "1",
    "max.events": "1",
    "azure.eventhubs.sas.keyname": "RootManageSharedAccessKey",
    "azure.eventhubs.sas.key": "<-Your primary SAS key->",
    "azure.eventhubs.namespace": "<-Your namespace->",
    "azure.eventhubs.hub.name": "<-Your event hub->"
  }
}

The important configuration parameters used here are:

azure.eventhubs.hub.name: The event hub to subscribe to.
azure.eventhubs.namespace: The Event Hubs namespace where the source hub resides.
kafka.topic: The Kafka topic into which the events received from Event Hubs are produced.
tasks.max: The maximum number of tasks that should be created for this connector. Each task can be assigned with one or more event hub partition. The connector uses round-robin to assign partitions over tasks.
You must pass your SAS credentials to the Event Hubs connector through your source connector configuration. To pass SAS in the source configuration set the azure.eventhubs.sas.keyname and the azure.eventhubs.sas.key: parameters. You can look up the primary SAS key through Azure portal after a namespace has been created. Navigate to the namespace panel, click Shared access policies under Settings, and you can view a list of policies on the right. Click any one of the policies, and you will see both primary key and secondary key to the right.
```
"azure.eventhubs.sas.keyname":<-Your Shared Access Policy name->
"azure.eventhubs.sas.key":<-Your primary SAS key->
```

Run the following command to start the Azure Event Hubs source connector:

confluent load EventHubsSourceConnector1 -d event-hubs-source-config.json

To check that the connector started successfully view the Connect worker’s log by running:

confluent log connect

Start a Kafka Consumer in a separate terminal session to view the data exported by the connector into the Kafka topic

bin/kafka-console-consumer.sh --bootstrap-server localhost:9092 --topic event_hub_topic --from-beginning

Finally, stop the Confluent services using:

confluent stop

Remove Unused Resources¶

To avoid any unintended charges, delete your resource group using the Azure portal. All the namespaces and event hubs in the resource group will be deleted as well.