Canonical announces the general availability of Charmed Kafka

27 February 2024: Today, Canonical announced the release of Charmed Kafka – an advanced solution for Apache Kafka^® that provides everything users need to run Apache Kafka at scale.  

Apache Kafka is an event store that supports a range of contemporary applications including microservices architectures, streaming analytics and AI/ML use cases. Canonical Charmed Kafka simplifies deployment and operation of Kafka across public clouds and private data centres alike. The free, open source solution is offered with comprehensive support and security maintenance, so teams can work with complete peace of mind.

“With Charmed Kafka, enterprise operations teams benefit from an advanced automation and management solution that goes far beyond Kafka cluster deployment and configuration”, said Jon Seager, Vice President of Engineering at Canonical. “Charmed Kafka is one of a series of comprehensive, Canonical open source data solutions that has been engineered for reliable operation, delivered with up to ten years of support and maintenance.”

Reduced operational burden and up to 10 years of support

Modern cloud infrastructure brings tremendous flexibility and agility, but deploying, securing and operating open source software on the cloud remains challenging. Charmed Kafka includes a comprehensive management solution that covers the full Kafka cluster lifecycle from initial deployment through to ongoing operational support and monitoring, and includes a distribution of Apache Kafka maintained by Canonical. The entire solution is backed by the Ubuntu Pro + Support subscription – with up to 10 years of support available for select stable tracks.

Simple per node pricing

The release of Charmed Kafka marks one of a series of integrated data solutions in Canonical’s data solutions portfolio . Customers purchase 24/7 or weekday enterprise support on a per-node basis through the Ubuntu Pro + Support plan, which covers  all applications within the portfolio, including Charmed Kafka and Charmed Spark as well as additional solutions for AI offered by Canonical including Charmed Kubeflow and Charmed MLFlow.

Cloud-native portability for Kafka

Charmed Kafka can be deployed on cloud virtual machines (VMs) as well as on Kubernetes, which brings true cloud-native portability across clouds and on-premise data centres. The solution can be deployed to cloud infrastructure such as AWS, Azure, Google Cloud and OpenStack, as well as VMWare, CNCF-conformant Kubernetes and directly on physical systems via Canonical MAAS.

The initial release offers robust features for automated deployment, configuration, scaling, observability, automated upgrades and for securing the cluster.
The Charmed Kafka software operator solution enables administrators to rapidly deploy, configure and operate Kafka clusters on cloud infrastructure or Kubernetes using Juju – Canonical’s open source orchestration engine – either directly or through Terraform.

Try Charmed Kafka today

Users can get started with Charmed Kafka by following the documentation at ubuntu.com/data/docs. Learn more at canonical.com/data/kafka.

About Canonical

Canonical, the publisher of Ubuntu, provides open source security, support and services. Our portfolio covers critical systems, from the smallest devices to the largest clouds, from the kernel to containers, from databases to AI. With customers that include top tech brands, emerging startups, governments and home users, Canonical delivers trusted open source for everyone.

Learn more at https://canonical.com/