Topic deletion and cleanup in Kafka - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Kafka Topic Deletion and Cleanup

📖 Scenario: You are managing a Kafka cluster that stores messages for different applications. Sometimes, old topics are no longer needed and should be deleted to free up space and keep the system clean.

🎯 Goal: You will learn how to delete a Kafka topic safely and verify that the topic has been removed from the cluster.

📋 What You'll Learn

Kafka cluster is running locally

Kafka command-line tools are available

Basic knowledge of terminal commands

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Kafka topics store streams of data for applications. Removing unused topics helps keep the system clean and saves storage.

💼 Career

Kafka administrators and DevOps engineers often need to manage topics, including deleting old ones to maintain cluster health.

1

Create a Kafka topic named old_topic

Use the Kafka command-line tool to create a topic called old_topic with 1 partition and a replication factor of 1.

Kafka

# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use kafka-topics.sh --create with the right flags to create the topic.

2

Enable topic deletion in Kafka configuration

Set the Kafka broker configuration property delete.topic.enable to true to allow topic deletion.

Kafka

kafka-topics.sh --create --topic old_topic --bootstrap-server localhost:9092 --partitions 1 --replication-factor 1
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Find the server.properties file and add or update delete.topic.enable=true. Restart Kafka after.

3

Delete the Kafka topic named old_topic

Use the Kafka command-line tool to delete the topic called old_topic.

Kafka

kafka-topics.sh --create --topic old_topic --bootstrap-server localhost:9092 --partitions 1 --replication-factor 1
# Edit the server.properties file and set delete.topic.enable=true
# Then restart the Kafka broker to apply the change
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use kafka-topics.sh --delete --topic old_topic to remove the topic.

4

Verify that the topic old_topic is deleted

List all Kafka topics and confirm that old_topic no longer appears.

Kafka

kafka-topics.sh --create --topic old_topic --bootstrap-server localhost:9092 --partitions 1 --replication-factor 1
# Edit the server.properties file and set delete.topic.enable=true
# Then restart the Kafka broker to apply the change
kafka-topics.sh --delete --topic old_topic --bootstrap-server localhost:9092
# Verify deletion and print confirmation here

Need a hint?

Use kafka-topics.sh --list and check that old_topic is not shown.