Kafka Fundamentals
Build a strong foundation in Kafka architecture, producers, consumers, partitions, offsets, consumer groups, replication, and basic troubleshooting.
Format
Live, instructor-led remote sessions
Price
$149
Next cohort
Nov 14, 2026 — November Cohort
Schedule
Saturdays, 12:00-1:30 PM ET
Who it’s for
- Engineers who need to build or maintain services that produce or consume Kafka messages
- Backend, platform, and data engineers new to event streaming
- Anyone who has read about Kafka but has not operated it hands-on
What you’ll leave able to do
- Explain brokers, topics, partitions, replication, and consumer groups using a live Kafka example.
- Deploy and configure a Kafka cluster in the supported lab environment and inspect its operational state.
- Produce and consume messages using appropriate client tools and verify the flow end to end.
- Monitor consumer lag and broker health using practical observability signals from the lab environment.
- Diagnose common producer, consumer, and broker issues using the concepts covered in the labs.
- Perform controlled failure exercises and explain how recovery behavior changes under partial outages.
- Apply security and access-control concepts covered in the curriculum to a safe lab environment.
- Use the Kafka CLI and broker metadata to troubleshoot typical operational problems during hands-on exercises.
Preview the learning experience
Sample lesson
Understanding Kafka Consumer Groups and Consumer Lag
12-minute sample lesson
A short preview that explains how partitions, ownership, and lag appear in a running Kafka environment.
- Understand partitions and consumer groups.
- Observe consumer lag in a running Kafka cluster.
- Introduce consumer processing delays.
- Monitor lag and troubleshoot the bottleneck.
Sample lab
Sample Lab: Consumer Lag and Resolution
Students launch a small Kafka cluster, create topics, introduce consumer delays, and compare lag trends before and after tuning.
- Create topics and verify partition distribution.
- Start producers and consumers in a controlled lab environment.
- Introduce slow processing on a consumer group.
- Measure lag and identify the bottleneck.
- Review the operational fix and expected results.
Curriculum
- 01Kafka architecture
- 02Topics and partitions
- 03Producers
- 04Consumers
- 05Consumer groups
- 06Offsets
- 07Replication basics
- 08Kafka CLI
- 09Basic troubleshooting
- 10Hands-on mini project
Hands-on labs
- Stand up a local Kafka cluster and create topics from the CLI
- Write a producer and consumer and watch offsets move in real time
- Simulate a broker failure and observe replication in action
- Diagnose a stuck consumer group
Format
Live, instructor-led remote sessions
Prerequisites
- Comfortable working in a terminal and writing basic code in any language
- No prior Kafka or messaging experience is required
Upcoming Cohorts
November Cohort
Nov 14, 2026
January Cohort
Jan 14, 2027
Enrollment
Choose an open cohort
Selected cohort
November Cohort
- Kafka Fundamentals
- Saturdays, 12:00-1:30 PM ET
- Nov 14, 2026
- Live Remote
- America/New_York
- Total: $149
Course payment and support details
Payment & checkout
One-time payment for the cohort.
- Live instructor-led sessions
- Hands-on lab environment access
- Course materials and exercises
- Cohort onboarding and practical troubleshooting guidance
Support
Community and post-course support options will be announced before the cohort begins.
- Live instruction during the scheduled cohort
- Hands-on lab exercises during the course
- Course materials and instructor guidance during the cohort
Ready to start Kafka Fundamentals?