Orbit
Replicate and migrate Kafka clusters. Currently in beta.
Overview
Orbit is a feature of the WarpStream BYOC product that can automatically replicate data and metadata from any source Kafka-compatible cluster to a destination WarpStream cluster. Orbit is built directly into the WarpStream Agents, and doesn't require any additional deployments or binaries, it runs directly in the destination WarpStream cluster.
Orbit can perfectly mirror Kafka records (including headers and preserving offsets), topic configurations, cluster configurations, topic deletions, consumer group offsets, and more.
Records copied from source to destination are identical down to the offsets of the records. This, combined with the fact that Orbit can also copy consumer groups offsets, means that Orbit can be used to reliably migrate Kafka clients to the destination cluster without any duplicate consumption of data.
There are four primary use-cases for Orbit:
Replication from a source Kafka cluster into WarpStream for migrations.
Creating replicated copies of source Kafka clusters for disaster recovery.
Creating replicated copies of source Kafka clusters for scalable tiered storage.
Creating replicated copies of source Kafka clusters to provide additional read replicas, and isolate workloads. For example, analytical or batch consumers could read from the WarpStream replica cluster to avoid overloading the source Kafka cluster.
Orbit Configuration
Orbit is fully controllable from a single YAML file which can be edited through the Warpstream console or created programmatically through terraform.
Overview
Here's a quick summary of the YAML file above:
Orbit is set up to connect to a Kafka cluster with 2 source brokers.
It will connect to the source brokers using SASL and will retrieve the username and password by reading the
ORBIT_SASL_USERNAME_ENV_VAR
andORBIT_SASL_PASSWORD_ENV_VAR
environment variables respectively in the Agent.Topics which match the
topic.*
regex in the source will be mirrored to the destination. In the destination atest_
prefix will be added to the topic names.Cluster configurations will not be copied over.
Consumer group names and offsets will be replicated into the destination cluster. The consumer group names will have a
orbit_group_
prefix in the destination.At most 2 concurrent fetches will be executed in the Warpstream Agents at any given time.
Specify Source Brokers
Host address and port of the the source cluster Kafka brokers or Agents.
Source cluster brokers are listed under the
source_bootstrap_brokers
in the YAML.Each broker is defined as a
hostname
and aport
.The brokers must be reachable from your Warpstream Agents.
Specify Credentials
Credentials used by the destination Warpstream agents to connect to the source cluster.
SASL credentials for the brokers are defined under the
source_cluster_credentials
section in the YAML.Orbit currently only supports SASL plain. Contact us if you need support for additional SASL mechanisms.
Both the
SASL_USERNAME_ENV_VAR
and theSASL_PASSWORD_ENV_VAR
fields refer to environment variables. The Agents will append aORBIT_
prefix to the values of the fields before using the environment variables, so the environment variables in the Agent should be configured asORBIT_SASL_USERNAME_ENV_VAR
andORBIT_SASL_PASSWORD_ENV_VAR
respectively.Since the Agents runs in your VPC, Warpstream does not have access to your credentials.
Topic Mappings
Replicate Topics
Topics can be replicated by adding mappings under the topic_mappings
section of the YAML.
To replicate a topic from the source cluster to the destination, add a topic mapping to the
topic_mappings
section with asource_regex
which will match the source topic which should be replicated. For example in the above regex, topics in the source cluster with prefixestopic
and1topic
would be replicated.Note that topics created by Orbit can only receive writes from Orbit until the
irreversible_disable_orbit_management
field in the topic mapping is set to true. See the producer migration section for details on how to use this field.
Pause Topic Replication
To pause replication for a topic, remove the mapping which matches the topic from the YAML.
For example, if the source cluster has a topic
topic2
, then it will replicated in the destination astest0_topic2
due to thedestination_prefix
test0_
.To pause writes to the
test0_topic2
topic in the destination, you can remove the mapping withdestination_prefix
test0_
andsource_regex
topic.*
.
Topic Mapping Rules
Detailed rules about the topic mappings which indicates which topics mappings match which topics.
Each mapping consists of
source_regex
,destination_prefix
, andirreversible_disable_orbit_management
fields.Orbit will create a new topic in the destination only if there exists a topic mapping with a
source_regex
which matches the source cluster topic.To determine if a topic in the source cluster matches a topic mapping, it must match a
source_regex
in at least one topic mapping. For example, the topictopicA
matches the first topic mapping.The value of the
destination_prefix
field is appended as a prefix to the topic name for the topic which will be created in the destination cluster. Empty string is a valid value fordestination_prefix
if you want the topics to have the same name in the destination WarpStream cluster as they did in the source cluster.To determine if a topic which has been created by Orbit in the destination cluster matches a topic matching, it must match the
destination_prefix
+source_regex
in at least one of the topic mappings. For example,topicA
is created astest0_topicA
in the destination, andtest0_topicA
in the destination, matches the first topic mapping.A topic in either the source or the destination cluster will match the mappings in the
topic_mappings
section in the order in which the topic mappings are listed, and only a single topic mapping will apply (the first one).Orbit will keep the topic configurations in sync for a source/destination topic pair only if the destination topic matches a topic mapping.
Orbit will keep deleted topics in sync for a source/destination topic pair only if the destination topic matches a topic mapping.
Orbit will replicate records for a source/destination topic pair only if the destination topic matches a topic mapping.
The
irreversible_disable_orbit_management
will only be respected if a destination topic matches the topic mapping with the flag set totrue
. See more details on topic migration in the producer migration section where the meaning of this configuration option is explained.
Topic Configurations
Orbit will copy topic configurations from the source cluster for all of the topics which Orbit is managing in the destination cluster. Note that only the following configuration values are considered relevant to WarpStream and will be copied by Orbit:
cleanup.policy
message.timestamp.type
retention.ms
delete.retention.ms
Sync Consumer Groups
Orbit can sync offsets of consumer groups which exist in the source cluster to the destination cluster.
Set
copy_offsets_enabled
totrue
under theconsumer_groups
section and Orbit will start mirroring consumer groups from the source cluster to the destination.
Sync Cluster Configurations
Orbit will copy cluster configurations from the source cluster to the destination if the
copy_source_cluster_configuration
flag under thecluster_config
section is set totrue
.Note that Orbit only copies cluster configurations which are relevant to WarpStream. These include:
num.partitions
which is used to determine the default number of partitions a new topic should be created with. This is referring to new topics created by a Kafka client, and not Orbit.auto.create.topics.enable
which indicates if new topics should be created automatically when the client performs a metadata request for a topic which does not exist.log.retention.ms
log.retention.minutes
log.retention.hours
which indicate the default retention used by the topics.offsets.retention.minutes
which indicates the expiration duration of the offsets committed by a consumer group.
Orbit UI
You can edit the Orbit YAML, view the offset lag for topic partitions being mirrored, and view which topics Orbit is mirroring all from the WarpStream UI.
Create Orbit YAML
Select your virtual cluster from the WarpStream console and navigate to the Orbit tab. You'll see a text editor which can be used to create and edit the Orbit YAML file.
Edit the YAML, and hit Save. Note that the pipeline is paused by default. You can start it by hitting the toggle next to the word PAUSED.
Once the pipeline is running, you'll see the topics which are mirrored by Orbit show up under the Orbit tab. In the image below, Orbit created a topic called
test_topic
with a prefixorbit_
as expected.
To modify the YAML, hit the edit button, edit the YAML, and hit Save again. Orbit will create a new configuration for the pipeline. In the image below, I've set
copy_offsets_enabled
totrue
so that consumer group offsets will be copied from the source cluster to the destination. Note: You will have to hit the Deploy button on the new version before it will take effect. You can also deploy older versions to "rollback".
You can view the lag between the source and destination cluster topic partitions from the Consumers tab. The
orbit_source_cluster_offsets
consumer group will include every topic and partition that is being mirrored by Orbit. The offset lag indicates how far behind Orbit is compared to the source cluster. Note: This group will always have a time lag of 0.
Migration
Orbit can be used to migrate existing Kafka compatible clusters to WarpStream.
Replication
First, follow the instructions above to configure WarpStream to replicate all of the topics and consumer groups from the source cluster. Monitor the lag of the orbit_source_cluster_offsets
consumer group to wait for WarpStream to "catch up" on all the source Kafka topics.
Consumers
The following migration flow will ensure that your Kafka consumer clients can be migrated to Warpstream without duplicate processing of records. The Orbit YAML must have the following config.
Orbit will periodically sync committed offsets for consumer groups to Warpstream.
Let's say you want to migrate some consumer group
X
.First, shut down the consumers belonging to this group in the source cluster.
Wait 1 minute for Orbit to copy the consumer group offsets for group
X
to the destination cluster. You can use thewarpstream_consumer_group_max_offset
metric emitted from the agents to view the offsets copied by Orbit to the destination. See the monitoring page for more details on this metric. You can also see the currently committed offsets in the consumers tab in the WarpStream UI.Restart consumers but point them to the destination WarpStream cluster instead by changing their bootstrap URL. The consumers will start reading from the offsets which were last committed in the source cluster, picking up where they left off.
Producers
The following migration flow will ensure that your Kafka producer clients can be cut over to WarpStream seamlessly. Using the irreversible_disable_orbit_management
field in a topic mapping will disable Orbit management of the topic. The following example shows how and when to use the field.
Let's say you have the following topic mapping in the Orbit YAML, and you have decided that you want to move the topic
topic0
matched by this mapping from the source to the destination. To make the example more complicated, let's assume that atopic1
also exists in the source cluster which is also being mirrored by Orbit.
First shut down the producer clients producing to
topic0
in the source.Wait for the offset lag between the source topic
topic0
and destination topictest0_topic0
to become 0. You can view the lag for the topic from theorbit_source_cluster_offsets
group in the Consumer view in the Warpstream console. The lag for all of the partitions of the topic are also emitted as thewarpstream_consumer_group_lag
metric from the Agents. See the monitoring page for more details on this metric. You can also see the currently committed offsets in the consumers tab in the WarpStream UI.Create a new topic mapping to migrate the
test0_topic
topic. Note theirreversible_disable_orbit_management
field. This field indicates that Orbit should stop managing the topic which will allow Kafka Producer clients to write to the topic. This decision is irreversible.
Since topic mappings match topics in order, the
test0_topic0
will now accept writes from regular Kafka clients, and Orbit will no longer copy records from source for this topic. Note thattest0_topic1
is unaffected because it does not match the topic mapping.Restart your producer clients by pointing them to the destination Warpstream cluster. Since
topic0
is known astest0_topic0
in the destination due to the prefix, you'll have to write totest0_topic0
instead.
Observability
You can monitor Orbit using the metrics built into the WarpStream Agents. See our monitoring documents for more details.
Orbit will also emit some additional metrics:
You can use the
warpstream_agent_kafka_produce_with_offset_uncompressed_bytes_counter
metric to view the data successfully written by Orbit to the destination WarpStream cluster.You can use the
warpstream_consumer_group_lag
and filter for the grouporbit_source_cluster_offsets
and the topics you care about to determine the lag between your topics in the source cluster and WarpStream. View the monitoring page for more details on this metric.You can use the
warpstream_consumer_group_max_offset
metric emitted from the agents to view the offsets copied by Orbit to the consumer group in the destination. See the monitoring page for more details on this metric.
Tuning Orbit
Orbit is tuneable using the following section which can be added to the Orbit YAML.
The above YAML controls how Orbit executes fetches which grab data from the source cluster.
The key field is the
cluster_fetch_concurrency
under thewarpstream
section. It can be used to control the approximate concurrency of fetches which will be executed against the source cluster and is the field you'd want to experiment with to find an appropriate setting for your workload.While it is recommended to use the default settings, you can also modify the fields under the
fetch_config
section to further tune Orbit. Thefetch_max_wait_ms
,fetch_min_bytes
,fetch_max_bytes
,fetch_max_partition_bytes
are equivalent to thefetch.max.wait.ms
,fetch.min.bytes
,fetch.max.bytes
,max.partition.fetch.bytes
Kafka settings respectively.
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