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

Using the `broker.rack` configuration parameter is the correct approach to protect against rack-level issues in Kafka. This configuration allows you to specify the rack location of each broker, which is essential for maintaining resilience and high availability in a distributed system like Kafka.

When `broker.rack` is correctly set, Kafka can make informed decisions about how to place replicas of partitions across different brokers in various racks. This ensures that all replicas of a partition are not placed in the same rack, protecting against rack-level failures. For instance, if one rack goes down, at least one replica of each partition remains available in a different rack, allowing the system to continue operating smoothly without losing data or availability.

The other options would not effectively mitigate rack-level issues. Placing all brokers in a single rack would increase the risk of data loss because a rack failure would impact all brokers simultaneously. Limiting the number of replicas might reduce resource usage but also increases the risk of data loss, as fewer copies of the data would be available. Disabling replication across racks would directly undermine the system's resilience, making the setup vulnerable to failures in any specific rack. Hence, using the `broker.rack` configuration is essential for achieving a robust Kafka deployment resilient to rack-level failures