Chapter 3. Technology previews
Technology Preview features are not supported with Red Hat production service-level agreements (SLAs) and might not be functionally complete; therefore, Red Hat does not recommend implementing any Technology Preview features in production environments. This Technology Preview feature provides early access to upcoming product innovations, enabling you to test functionality and provide feedback during the development process. For more information about support scope, see Technology Preview Features Support Scope.
3.1. Distributed tracing with Jaeger
This is a Technology Preview feature.
This release adds support for the distributed tracing of transactions within a typical Kafka architecture. Using an included OpenTracing Java library, you can instrument your client applications to generate traces for transactions, for example, producing and consuming messages.
Distributed tracing is supported in the following components:
- Kafka clusters
- Producers and consumers
- Kafka Streams applications
- Mirror Maker
- Kafka Connect
Trace data is visualized in a user interface using Jaeger. You can use this information to monitor the operation of your Kafka cluster from end-to-end, and debug performance issues with target systems and applications.
An example of a query in the Jaeger user interface
3.2. OAuth 2.0 authentication
This is a Technology Preview feature.
AMQ Streams supports the use of OAuth 2.0 authentication using the SASL OAUTHBEARER mechanism.
Using OAuth 2.0 token based authentication, application clients can access resources on application servers (called ‘resource servers’) without exposing account credentials. The client presents an access token as a means of authenticating, which application servers can also use to find more information about the level of access granted. The authorization server handles the granting of access and inquiries about access.
In the context of AMQ Streams:
- Kafka brokers act as resource servers
- Kafka clients act as resource clients
The brokers and clients communicate with the OAuth 2.0 authorization server, as necessary, to obtain or validate access tokens.
For a deployment of AMQ Streams, OAuth 2.0 integration provides:
- Server-side OAuth 2.0 support for Kafka brokers
- Client-side OAuth 2.0 support for Kafka Mirror Maker, Kafka Connect and the Kafka Bridge
Red Hat Single Sign-On integration
You can deploy Red Hat Single Sign-On as an authorization server and configure it for integration with AMQ Streams.
You can use Red Hat Single Sign-On to:
- Configure authentication for Kafka brokers
- Configure and authorize clients
- Configure users and roles
- Obtain access and refresh tokens