If you create a partitioned topic with at least 3 partitions then you will see your client connect to all of the brokers. The client decides which partition a message should go to and then sends it directly to the broker that is the leader for that partition. If you have replicated topics, then the brokers themselves will also be connected to one-another in order to replication messages.
-Dave -----Original Message----- From: Skip Montanaro [mailto:skip.montan...@gmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, November 28, 2017 8:06 AM To: users@kafka.apache.org Subject: Multiple brokers - do they share the load? Apologies for the rather long set-up... I've been using Kafka as a client for a few months now. The setup I've been using has three brokers on separate servers, all listening to port 9092. My consumers always connected to server1:9092. I've ignored server2 and server3. Now I'm starting to mess around a bit with setting up my own itsy-bitsy cluster. Step one is a single instance at host1:9092. Next step in the instructions (I'm following the recipe laid out in the documentation) will be to add two more brokers at host1:9093 and host1:9094. My question: If every consumer connects to host1:9092 will the brokers listening to the other ports starve for attention, or does the connection process somehow redirect clients to the other brokers so the three (or more) brokers get fairly equitable loads? Thanks, Skip Montanaro This e-mail and any files transmitted with it are confidential, may contain sensitive information, and are intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender by reply e-mail immediately and destroy all copies of the e-mail and any attachments.