AWS MSK Fetch Follower Test

Kafka’s replication feature provides high availability by optionally persisting each partition on multiple brokers. In a replicated partition, Kafka will write messages to only one replica - the partition leader. The other replicas are followers, which fetch copies of the messages from the leader. Consumers may read from either the partition leader or from a follower.

This test reports the mean time of the request from the follower broker to the leader broker that waits in the queue and the mean time of the response from the leader broker to the follower broker that waits in the queue. Using this test, administrators can proactively figure out if the mean time for both the request and response queues takes too long to process.

Target of the test : AWS Managed Service Kafka

Agent deploying the test : A remote agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for the target AWS Managed Service Kafka server.

Configurable parameters for the test
Parameter Description

Test Period

How often should the test be executed.

Host

The IP address of the AWS Managed Service Kafka Broker that is being monitored.

Port

Specify the port number at which the specified HOST listens. By default, this is NULL.

AWS Default Region

This test uses AWS CLI to interact with AWS Managed Service Kafka and pull relevant metrics. To enable the test to connect to AWS, you need to configure the test with the name of the region to which all requests for metrics should be routed, by default. Specify the name of this AWS Default Region, here.

AWS Access Key ID, AWS Secret Access Key and Confirm Password

To monitor AWS Managed Service Kafka, the eG agent has to be configured with the access key and secret key of a user with a valid AWS account. For this purpose, we recommend that you create a special user on the AWS cloud, obtain the access and secret keys of this user, and configure this test with these keys. The procedure for this has been detailed in the Obtaining an Access key and Secret key topic. Make sure you reconfirm the access and secret keys you provide here by retyping it in the corresponding Confirm Password text box.

Timeout Seconds

Specify the maximum duration (in seconds) for which the test will wait for a response from the server. The default is 10 seconds.
Measurements made by the test
Measurement Description Measurement Unit Interpretation

Follower local time

Indicates the mean time that the follower request is processed at the leader.

Seconds

 

Follower request queue time

Indicates the mean time that the follower request waits in the request queue.

Seconds

 

Follower response queue time

Indicates the mean time that the follower request waits in the response queue.

Seconds

 

Follower response send time

Indicates the mean time for the follower to send a response.

Seconds

 

Follower total time

Indicates the mean total time that followers spend on fetching data from the broker.

Seconds