Setting Up Kafka Alerts
Learn how to configure effective Kafka alerting that catches real issues without overwhelming your team with false positives and noise.
Essential Kafka Alert Categories
The critical alerts every Kafka deployment should have
Broker Health Alerts
Monitor broker availability, resource usage, and performance degradation.
Consumer Lag Alerts
Track consumer performance and detect processing bottlenecks.
Performance Alerts
Monitor throughput, latency, and system performance metrics.
Setting Effective Thresholds
Guidelines for setting alert thresholds that catch real issues
Threshold Best Practices
Use Historical Baselines
Set thresholds based on historical performance data, not arbitrary numbers
Account for Business Patterns
Consider daily, weekly, and seasonal variations in your thresholds
Use Multiple Conditions
Combine multiple conditions to reduce false positives
Include Duration Checks
Require conditions to persist for a minimum duration before alerting
Example Thresholds
Consumer Lag
Broker CPU
Disk Usage
Multi-Channel Notifications
Ensure alerts reach the right people through the right channels
Detailed alerts with context and resolution steps.
Slack
Team collaboration and quick acknowledgment.
Teams
Integration with Microsoft Teams workflows.
PagerDuty
Incident management and on-call escalation.
Alert Configuration Examples
Practical examples you can adapt for your environment
Consumer Lag Alert
Configuration
Alert Details
Broker Down Alert
Configuration
Alert Details
Alert Escalation Policies
Ensure critical issues get the attention they need
Initial Alert
Notify primary on-call engineer via Slack and email
First Escalation
If not acknowledged, page secondary engineer and notify team lead
Manager Escalation
Escalate to engineering manager and start incident response
Executive Escalation
Notify CTO/VP Engineering for major business impact
Escalation Best Practices
- • Different escalation times for different severity levels
- • Clear acknowledgment requirements to stop escalation
- • Automated incident creation for critical alerts
- • Regular review and testing of escalation policies
Alert Testing & Maintenance
Keep your alerting system effective over time
Regular Testing
Validate that your alerts work correctly and reach the right people.
Continuous Improvement
Regularly review and adjust alerts based on operational feedback.
Implement Intelligent Kafka Alerting
KLogic provides pre-configured alert templates and intelligent thresholds that adapt to your Kafka environment automatically.
Free 14-day trial • Pre-configured alerts • Multi-channel notifications