We want to be able to monitor the ability to send messages to Kafka topics. We want to be aware of the inability to do so before the time we attempt to send a message. What we're looking for is something like a heartbeat. The reason we need this is that in our deployment environment, Kafka and its clients will not be co-located. As such, network issues could cause Kafka to not be available to its client.
We've considered using Zookeeper that's already managing the Kafka cluster but have not been able to determine exactly how we would use it. We've also considered requesting a JMX MBean periodically and concluding the cluster is not accessible if we can't get the MBean from at least 1 broker. What is the recommended way of accomplishing what we're trying to do? Thanks. Ken Hohl Cars.com
