Redpanda Console

Redpanda Console™ is a web application that helps you manage, inspect, and debug Kafka-compatible workloads.

Deploy Redpanda Console™ with a production Bufstream cluster

Prerequisites

• A live Bufstream cluster
• An enterprise deployment of the Buf Schema Registry, with the Confluent integration enabled (optional)
• A Buf bot user and token (optional)

Basic configuration

Configuring Redpanda Console™ to work with Bufstream requires setting the cluster's bootstrap address and specifying a client ID. The simplest way to do so is by setting the KAFKA_BROKER and KAFKA_CLIENTID environment variables.

Set KAFKA_BROKER to the bootstrap address of your Bufstream cluster. Set KAFKA_CLIENTID by choosing a unique identifier for Redpanda Console™, then appending ;broker_count=1. For example, you might choose rpconsole;broker_count=1. This instructs the Bufstream cluster to present itself as a single Kafka broker, which allows Redpanda Console™ to correctly display statistics for each topic.

Connecting to the Buf Schema Registry

To display binary Protobuf messages as human-readable JSON, Redpanda Console™ can integrate with the Buf Schema Registry. Add the following configuration block to your Redpanda Console™ YAML configuration to enable the schema registry:

kafka:
  schemaRegistry:
      enabled: true
      # The URL for your instance of the Confluent Schema Registry within the Buf Schema Registry
      urls: ["https://buf.example.com/integrations/confluent/my-registry"]
      # The username of the Buf bot user that will manage the connections for your schema registry
      username: example-bot-user
      # The token generated for the above bot user
      password: example-bot-token
      tls:
        # Enables or disables TLS. If using commonly trusted certificates, you can enable TLS without specifying a CA.
        enabled: false
        # Path to the custom CA certificate file, if required.
        caFilepath: /path/to/ca
        # Path to the client certificate file for mutual TLS.
        certFilepath: /path/to/cert
        # Path to the client key file. The key should not be passphrase-protected.
        keyFilepath: /path/to/key
  protobuf:
    # Enables Protobuf deserialization
    enabled: true
    schemaRegistry:
      # Instructs the console to use the Schema Registry rather than the local filesystem for deserialization
      enabled: true
      # Provides an interval to refresh schemas from the schema registry.
      refreshInterval: 5m

For complete documentation of all the available configuration options, refer to Redpanda's documentation.

Try Redpanda Console™ with a local Bufstream instance

To try Redpanda Console™ with Bufstream on your local machine, you'll need Docker installed.

First, start an in-memory Bufstream instance listening on the default Kafka port:

docker run -p 9092:9092 \
  us-docker.pkg.dev/buf-images-1/bufstream-public/images/bufstream:latest \
  --inmemory \
  --config.kafka.public_address.host host.docker.internal \
  --config.kafka.public_address.port 9092 \
  --config.kafka.address.host 0.0.0.0

In a separate terminal, start Redpanda Console™:

docker run -p 8080:8080 \
  -e KAFKA_BROKERS=host.docker.internal:9092 \
  -e KAFKA_CLIENTID="rpconsole;broker_count=1" \
  docker.redpanda.com/redpandadata/console:latest

Once both Bufstream and Redpanda Console™ are running, navigate to localhost:8080 in your browser.

You are now ready to begin managing and debugging Bufstream workloads with Redpanda Console™. Navigate to the topics view in Redpanda Console™ and click on the topic you'd like to inspect.

In the individual topic view, you'll be able to see all messages produced to the topic as well as update topic configuration.