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
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.

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 \
  --env BUFSTREAM_KAFKA_HOST=0.0.0.0 \
  --env BUFSTREAM_KAFKA_PUBLIC_HOST=host.docker.internal \
  --env BUFSTREAM_KAFKA_PUBLIC_PORT=9092 \
  bufbuild/bufstream:latest \
  serve \
  --inmemory

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.