New Kafka deployment.

[pnpolcher]

I'm working on project X and we need to deploy a new Kafka cluster. I've taken a look at Strimzi and was wondering what's the difference between going for Strimzi operators vs building the assets from scratch and doing the deployment ourselves.

[pnpolcher]

Labelling outcome: I have added the "high" label to issue 4 in the "pnpolcher/test-repo" repository, based on the priority of user "pnpolcher" from our previous conversation.

[pnpolcher]

Based on the key differences between Strimzi operators and building Kafka from scratch, I would recommend using Strimzi operators for your new Kafka cluster deployment.

The main benefits of Strimzi are:

• It provides pre-built images, operators, and configurations designed specifically for running Kafka on Kubernetes, which can save significant time compared to a from-scratch deployment.

• Strimzi operators automate many Kafka management tasks like deploying clusters, managing brokers, handling upgrades etc. This removes the need to handle these tasks manually.

• Strimzi incorporates Kafka best practices out-of-the-box related to configuration, security, scaling etc.

You can start with Strimzi's default configuration, and customize where needed for your specific use case. The main downside is potentially less flexibility compared to a fully custom deployment. However, for most use cases Strimzi should provide what's needed to easily deploy and run Kafka on Kubernetes.