Required software to download

Download below software

1. Java runtime environment. We need oracle account to download.
2. Zookeeper Extract the content into folder C:\kafka\apache-zookeeper-3.5.6-bin. (There are tow files in download location, download the bin file.)
3. Kafka Extract into C:\kafka\kafka_2.12-2.3.1

Install - Java SE Runtime Environment 8

click install to start installing

Set Java home variable

1. Control panel —> System settings
2. Advanced system settings
3. Environment variables
4. Add new
5. Give variable name as JAVA_HOME and vale as the JRE installed location path. By default it will be at C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.8.0_231

Set path variable for Java

1. Select path variable
2. Edit
3. Give %JAVA_HOME%\bin

Ensure java version from command prompt

run java -version in command prompt to check the java installation

Apache ZooKeeper

Ensure that you downloaded the bin file from the download location. The other file(without bin) is also having the same content but it won’t work (don’t know exactly why!)

Config Zookeeper

1. Go to folder C:\kafka\apache-zookeeper-3.5.6-bin\conf
2. Copy paste the config file zoo_sample.cfg as zoo.cfg
3. Open zoo.cfg file in a text editor then change the dataDir value to C:\\kafka\\tmp\\zookeeper (ensure double back slashes \\ used, if in windows)

Config Kafka

1. Open C:\kafka\kafka_2.12-2.3.1\config\server.properties file to make config changes.
2. Update log.dirs values as C:\\kafka\\tmp\\kafka-logs

It’s time to Run kafka

Start zookeeper

Go to C:\kafka\apache-zookeeper-3.5.6-bin\bin folder in command prompt then run zkServer.cmd

Start Kafka

1. Ensure that zookeeper is running.
2. Run below command from C:\kafka\kafka_2.12-2.3.1 to start kafka .\bin\windows\kafka-server-start.bat .\config\server.properties
3. Basically we have to run kafka-server-start.bat file with config file as 2nd argument.

Test the kafka is working fine

Start producer

Open a new command prompt in the location C:\kafka\kafka_2.12-2.3.1\bin\windows

Run the below command to start a new producer kafka-console-producer.bat --broker-list localhost:9092 --topic test

Start consumer

Open one more new command prompt in the same location and run the below command to start consumer and monitor test topic. kafka-console-consumer.bat --bootstrap-server localhost:9092 --topic test

Testing by sending sample message

Type something in producer window and press enter the same message will appear in the consumer window. If everything works fine, congrats, you have successfully started kafka. :)