What is Kafka Cruise Control?

Kafka Cruise Control is an open-source project from LinkedIn for automating Kafka operations at scale. Key features: Partition rebalancing: automatically rebalance partitions across brokers to equalize CPU, network, and disk usage — solves the common problem of hot brokers after adding new nodes. Anomaly detection: detect under-replicated partitions, broker failures, and disk saturation. Self-healing: automatically fix detected issues without operator intervention. Capacity estimation: predict when resources will run out based on current growth. Goal-based optimization: define goals (balanced rack distribution, resource utilization) and Cruise Control proposes partition moves to achieve them. In large Kafka clusters (100+ brokers), manual partition rebalancing is impractical — Cruise Control automates it. It exposes a REST API for triggering and monitoring rebalances.