Kafka parameters

Provide the appropriate parameters to fine-tune the configuration of the Kafka clients of IBM Business Automation Insights.

General

Kafka clients on the IBM Cloud Pak® for Business Automation platform are automatically configured to match the settings of the Kafka server from IBM Automation foundation. Beyond this basic configuration, you can customize the Kafka clients that are deployed by the IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation platform by using the platform custom resource (CR).

Syntax

Configuration parameters for IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation custom resources start with the spec.bai_configuration. prefix.

For example:

spec
...
  bai_configuration:
    kafka:
      auto_offset_reset: earliest

Updates to parameter values

You can customize the Kafka clients of IBM Business Automation Insights, including for topic names, by setting the parameters in the bai_configuration.kafka section.

When you modify the initial value of a Kafka parameter, check the Updating your Business Automation Insights custom resource page for possible additional steps for your changes to be effective.

Topic names

Important: All topic names must be prefixed with icp4ba-bai.

Configuration of Kafka clients

The following table lists the parameters that you set to fine-tune the connection of IBM Business Automation Insights to Kafka.

Table 1. Connection to Kafka
Parameter	Description	Default value
kafka.properties_config_map	The name of a ConfigMap that is already deployed to Kubernetes and contains Kafka consumer and producer properties. For more information, see Specifying a configuration map for Kafka properties.	None
kafka.socket_timeout_ms	The number of milliseconds before the socket communication with the Kafka server times out.	10000
kafka.auto_offset_reset	Indicates whether event consumption starts at the earliest offset or at the latest offset. The default value is latest, which means that the events that are sent before IBM Business Automation Insights is running are not processed. For example, such events might have been sent for testing purposes or might be erroneous or wrongly formatted. If for specific reasons you want events that are sent before Business Automation Insights start to be processed, set this parameter to earliest.	latest
kafka.topics_replication_factor	The replication factor that is used by Business Automation Insights when it creates Kafka topics.	3 in production mode 1 in starter mode

Kafka topics

The following table lists the parameters that you set to configure the egress, ingress, and service Kafka topics.

Note: You can enable or disable data egress later as explained in Enabling or disabling Kafka egress .

Table 2. Configuration of Kafka topics
Parameter	Description	Default value
settings.egress	Enables Kafka data egress.	`false`
settings.ingress_topic	The Kafka ingress topic	`icp4ba-bai-ingress`
settings.egress_topic	The Kafka egress topic	`icp4ba-bai-egress`