Kafbat and Kafka using WSL

 Kafbat container connect to local WSL Kafka on Windows.

 

Introduction

I wanted to set up a quick dev environment on my Windows machine, using linux (WSL). Didn't want to spend too much time on this but eventually wasted 2 hours.

Hopefully this will help you get going quickly.

 Aim

To get a local kafka broker running and use Kafbat UI to connect to it. 

 Running Kafbat UI

 docker run -it -p 8080:8080 --net="host" -e DYNAMIC_CONFIG_ENABLED=true ghcr.io/kafbat/kafka-ui

 The --net=host allows it to form part of the machines network and understand hosts.

 My WSL /etc/hosts file already had an entry created as shown below. So I needed to use the same hostname :

# This file was automatically generated by WSL. To stop automatic generation of this file, add the following entry to /etc/wsl.conf:
# [network]
# generateHosts = false
127.0.0.1       localhost
127.0.1.1       E1509.internal.mycompany.com  E1509

 

 Kafka Setup

I altered the Advertised Listeners in my server.properties:

 listeners = PLAINTEXT:// E1509.internal.mycompany.com:9092

 Started the Kafka server and connected to it from my Kafbat UI.

 

 Everything works, now can work on my POC!