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With min.insync.replicas=3 and acks=all, a partition must have at least 3 in-sync replicas (ISRs) for the producer to succeed. With one broker down (broker 0), only 2 ISRs remain → not enough to meet the requirement. Therefore, producers cannot write to affected partitions.

However, for some partitions where the leader and replicas are on brokers 1 and 2, the full ISR (3) may still be present (if broker 0 was not a replica). In this scenario, exactly 6 of the 9 partitions may still have ISR=3 depending on replica distribution.

From Kafka documentation:

“When acks=all and min.insync.replicas is not met, the broker will reject the produce request with an exception.”

Page Reference:

Kafka: The Definitive Guide, 1st Edition, Chapter 5, p. 159–161

Apache Kafka Documentation: Topic Config – min.insync.replicas

To support gradual migration to SSL, Kafka supports configuring multiple listeners. You can run both a PLAINTEXT listener (for legacy clients) and an SSL listener (for new clients), allowing dual access.

From Kafka documentation:

“You can configure multiple listeners on a broker with different security protocols. This allows rolling out SSL while supporting legacy connections.”

A → Incorrect: Modifying the current listener breaks current clients.

B → Misleading: Changing advertised listeners affects how clients connect, which breaks backward compatibility.

C → Correct: Dual listeners allow phased SSL migration.

D → SSL must be configured on both ends to be effective.

Page Reference:

Kafka: The Definitive Guide, 1st Edition, Chapter 10, p. 305

Apache Kafka Documentation: Configuring Multiple Listeners

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Apache Kafka supports several security protocols for configuring broker listeners, which define how clients connect to brokers securely or insecurely. As per the official Apache Kafka documentation (“Security Overview” and “Broker Configuration” sections):

PLAINTEXT:“PLAINTEXT – Unauthenticated, unencrypted connections.”This is the default protocol when no security is configured.

SSL:“SSL – SSL authentication and encryption.”It provides secure communication between clients and brokers using SSL/TLS.

SASL_SSL:“SASL_SSL – SASL authentication and SSL encryption.”This combines SASL-based authentication with SSL encryption for secure and authenticated connections.

SASL_PLAINTEXTis also supported, but it was not listed in your options.

Option C (SASL)is not a valid protocol on its own—it’s a mechanism used within SASL_PLAINTEXT or SASL_SSL.

Option E (GSSAPI)is a SASL mechanism (often used with Kerberos), not a protocol.

Therefore, the correct answers are:

A. PLAINTEXT

B. SSL

D. SASL_SSL

Page Reference:

Confluent Kafka: The Definitive Guide, 1st Edition, Chapter 9 (“Kafka Security”), p. 282–283.

Apache Kafka Documentation, “Security Overview” and “Configuring Broker Listeners”.

To increase throughput, Kafka recommends allowing larger batches and giving more time for the producer to accumulate records into batches:

batch.size: Increasing this allows more records to be sent in a single request.

linger.ms: Increasing this adds a delay so that the producer can accumulate more messages into a batch.

From Kafka documentation:

“Increasing both batch.size and linger.ms allows the producer to send larger, more efficient batches, improving throughput at the cost of slightly increased latency.”

Page Reference:

Kafka: The Definitive Guide, 1st Edition, Chapter 5, p. 162–163

Apache Kafka Documentation: Producer Configuration Parameters

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Kafka follows a specific sequence for evaluating permissions:

If a user is listed as a Super User → Access granted.

Otherwise, Kafka checks if there's an explicit Allow ACL → Grants access.

If not allowed, it checks for an explicit Deny ACL → Denies access.

If no ACL matches → Denied by default.

From Apache Kafka documentation:

“The evaluation order is: Superuser → Allow ACL → Deny ACL → Default deny.”

Page Reference:

Kafka: The Definitive Guide, 1st Edition, Chapter 9, p. 286

Apache Kafka Documentation: “Kafka Authorization – Evaluation Order”

A message (also referred to as a record or event) is the smallest unit of data in Kafka. Each message consists of a key, value, timestamp, and metadata. Messages are stored in partitions and are identified by their offsets.

From Kafka documentation:

“The atomic unit of data in Kafka is a message, which includes a key, value, and headers.”

A → Logical grouping of messages.

B → Correct: Base-level data structure.

C → A topic holds partitions, not messages directly.

D → Refers to the position of a message, not the message itself.

Page Reference:

Kafka: The Definitive Guide, 1st Edition, Chapter 4, p. 120

Apache Kafka Documentation: Message Structure