Deploy Kafka on Northflank

Apache Kafka is a distributed streaming platform that allows developers and teams to publish, process, and consume real-time data at scale. It’s widely used for event-driven applications, messaging systems, analytics pipelines, and microservice communication.

With Northflank, you can deploy Kafka in minutes using the Kafka stack template. This prebuilt setup handles networking, storage, and runtime configuration, so you can focus on building real-time applications instead of managing brokers and infrastructure.

If you’re new to the platform and wondering what Kafka is, it’s a high-throughput message broker that stores data in topics and streams events between services.

Producers publish messages to topics while consumers read them asynchronously, enabling reliable, decoupled communication between applications. Many teams host Kafka on Docker, attach persistent storage for logs, and use it to power streaming architectures that run continuously in production environments.

The Kafka stack template provisions everything needed for a production-ready Kafka environment.

It includes:

• A deployment service running the official Apache Kafka Docker image
• Kraft-mode configuration, where the broker and controller are managed in a single node
• Persistent storage for Kafka log data to ensure message durability

This setup ensures reliable message streaming by persisting topic data to storage while keeping the Kafka broker responsive under load.

1. Create an account on Northflank
2. Click deploy Kafka now
3. Click deploy stack to save and run the Kafka template
4. Wait for the deployment to complete
5. Connect your applications to the Kafka client port to begin publishing and consuming messages

This stack template gives you a complete Kafka deployment environment:

• Stream and process high-volume event data in real time
• Persist topic logs using dedicated storage
• Run Kafka in Kraft mode without a separate ZooKeeper service
• Connect internal services using standard Kafka client libraries
• Scale compute resources without manually managing hosts
• Operate Kafka inside a fully managed environment

It follows production best practices and supports both development and long-running streaming workloads.

• Kafka Service – Hosts the Kafka broker and controller using the official Docker image
• Persistent Storage – Stores Kafka log and topic data to maintain durability across restarts
• Environment Configuration – Automatically configures listener, controller, and Kraft roles for stable operation

Deploying Kafka on Northflank is the easiest way to run a modern, distributed streaming platform that is reliable, scalable, and developer-friendly.

You now have a production-ready Kafka environment for real-time data pipelines, event streaming, and microservice communication, without the complexity of managing infrastructure manually.