Apache Kafka Complete Practice Exam 2025 – All-in-One Prep

A retention policy in Kafka specifically defines how long the data will be preserved within the Kafka topics. This is a crucial feature as it enables users to control the lifecycle of their data and manage storage efficiently. By establishing a retention policy, administrators can set a duration (in days, hours, or even minutes) for how long messages in a topic will remain available before they are automatically deleted.

This capability allows organizations to balance between maintaining data for consumption and managing storage resources effectively. Data older than the specified retention period will be purged, ensuring that only the relevant and necessary data is kept in the system, thereby preventing unnecessary storage costs and improving system performance.

Other choices relate to different aspects of Kafka's functionality, such as data backup, compression, and consumption logistics, but they do not pertain to the retention policy directly.