custom kafka reporters without JMX

[Alex Gray]

Hi,

I want to start collecting metrics from our Kafka brokers, and 
everywhere I see people (including the heavy hitters at LinkedIn) using 
JMX to gather everything.

From what I understand, you can also collect metrics from Kafka 
*without* enabling JMX and this is done by writing your own custom 
reporter and starting up Kafka with your custom reporter in the class 
path and simply:
kafka.metrics.reporters=kafka.metrics.MySpecialReporter

Unfortunately I have not found too much documentation or examples on how 
to do this.

Can someone point me in the right direction?

Thanks!