Experience RobustMQ Kafka

Prerequisite: Start the Broker

Follow the Quick Install guide to install RobustMQ, then start the service:

robust-server start

The Kafka protocol starts together with RobustMQ, listening on port 9092 by default — no extra configuration needed. It's the same broker process as MQTT, NATS, mq9, and AMQP — one command starts every protocol at once.

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Choose a Kafka Client

Use either of the following to test Kafka produce/consume.

Option 1: Official Kafka CLI

Use the kafka-*.sh command-line tools bundled with any official Kafka distribution (3.x / 4.x) — no RobustMQ-specific tooling needed.

Option 2: robust-bench (built-in)

robust-bench is RobustMQ's built-in benchmarking tool — no extra installation needed. See the full usage guide: Bench CLI Documentation

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Create a Topic, Produce, and Consume

# create a topic
kafka-topics.sh --bootstrap-server localhost:9092 \
  --create --topic quickstart --partitions 3

# produce
kafka-console-producer.sh --bootstrap-server localhost:9092 --topic quickstart
>hello
>robustmq kafka
# Ctrl-C to end

# consume
kafka-console-consumer.sh --bootstrap-server localhost:9092 \
  --topic quickstart --from-beginning

Seeing the two lines you just produced confirms the data path is working.

RobustMQ auto-creates topics by default, so producing directly will implicitly create the topic too; creating it explicitly gives you more control.

Consume with a Consumer Group

kafka-console-consumer.sh --bootstrap-server localhost:9092 \
  --topic quickstart --group g1 --from-beginning

kafka-consumer-groups.sh --bootstrap-server localhost:9092 \
  --describe --group g1

More commands in the CLI Guide.

Benchmark (robust-bench)

robust-bench kafka pub --count 100 --duration-secs 30
robust-bench kafka sub --count 100 --duration-secs 30

More options in the Bench CLI Documentation.

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SDK Integration

RobustMQ is compatible with the standard Kafka protocol — any standard community Kafka client library works out of the box.

Properties props = new Properties();
props.put("bootstrap.servers", "localhost:9092");
props.put("key.serializer", "org.apache.kafka.common.serialization.StringSerializer");
props.put("value.serializer", "org.apache.kafka.common.serialization.StringSerializer");

try (KafkaProducer<String, String> producer = new KafkaProducer<>(props)) {
    producer.send(new ProducerRecord<>("quickstart", "k1", "hello from java"));
    producer.flush();
}

Next Steps

• Core Concepts — Topics, offsets, consumer groups, coordinators
• Quick Start (full version) — SASL connections, Java consumer example
• Protocol Support — which APIs your client can use
• Compatibility & Limitations