Kafka Broker Sizing Calculator
Calculate the optimal number of Kafka brokers based on storage capacity, network bandwidth, replication requirements, and data retention policies for scalable deployments.
Configuration
Total data produced per day
How long to keep data
Number of data replicas
After OS and other overhead
Typical: 125 MBps for 1Gbps network
Current/target write rate
Sum of all consumer rates
0.7 = 30% compression, 1.0 = no compression
About Kafka Broker Sizing Calculator
Our comprehensive Apache Kafka broker sizing calculator helps you determine the optimal number of brokers for your cluster. Calculate broker requirements based on storage capacity, network bandwidth, replication factors, data retention, and compression ratios for production-ready deployments.
Essential tool for infrastructure architects, platform engineers, and DevOps teams managing Kafka clusters at scale.
Key Features
- • Storage-based broker calculation
- • Network bandwidth optimization
- • Replication factor impact analysis
- • Compression ratio consideration
- • Resource utilization monitoring
- • Production deployment presets
- • Detailed sizing reports
- • Real-time validation warnings
Use Cases & Applications
- • Production cluster planning
- • Capacity planning & scaling
- • Infrastructure cost estimation
- • Performance optimization
- • Disaster recovery planning
- • Multi-region deployments
- • Cloud migration sizing
- • Hardware procurement
Sizing Considerations
- • Daily data ingestion volume
- • Data retention requirements
- • Replication & fault tolerance
- • Network bandwidth limits
- • Disk storage capacity
- • Compression effectiveness
- • Consumer egress patterns
- • Future growth planning
Kafka Broker Sizing Methodology
Proper Kafka broker sizing ensures optimal performance, cost efficiency, and fault tolerance. Our calculator uses industry-proven formulas that account for both storage and network constraints:
Storage-Based Sizing
Total Storage = Daily Ingress × Retention Days × Replication Factor × Compression Ratio
- • Accounts for data compression
- • Includes replication overhead
- • Considers retention policies
- • Plans for disk utilization limits
Network-Based Sizing
Network Load = (Ingress + Egress) × Replication Factor × Overhead
- • Producer ingress bandwidth
- • Consumer egress bandwidth
- • Inter-broker replication
- • Network capacity limits
High Availability Planning
- • Minimum 3 brokers for HA
- • Rack awareness configuration
- • Cross-AZ distribution
- • Failure tolerance planning
- • Rolling upgrade capacity
Performance Optimization
- • 20-30% capacity buffer
- • SSD vs HDD considerations
- • JVM heap sizing (6-8GB)
- • OS page cache optimization
- • Dedicated log volumes