Amazon MSK (Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka)

Arpio provides disaster recovery capabilities for Amazon MSK clusters, including both provisioned and serverless configurations. This documentation covers the resources Arpio replicates and important considerations for MSK disaster recovery.

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Kafka Cluster Kafka Configuration


Kafka Cluster

Arpio replicates MSK clusters to your disaster recovery environment, preserving cluster configuration, authentication settings, and custom Kafka configurations. Both provisioned and serverless cluster types are supported.

Provisioned Clusters

Provisioned MSK clusters are replicated with their complete configuration including broker nodes, storage, networking, and authentication settings. Arpio creates an equivalent cluster in the target region with the same:

  • Kafka version
  • Number of broker nodes
  • Instance type and storage configuration
  • Networking configuration (subnets and security groups)
  • Encryption settings
  • Authentication methods
  • Enhanced monitoring settings
  • Custom Kafka configuration

Attribute

Translation

Cluster Name

Preserved as-is in the target environment

Kafka Version

Preserved (e.g., 3.8.x)

Number of Broker Nodes

Preserved for provisioned clusters

Instance Type

Preserved (e.g., kafka.m5.large)

Storage Volume Size

Preserved per broker node

Subnets

Translated to equivalent subnets in the target VPC based on CIDR blocks

Security Groups

Translated to equivalent security groups in the target VPC

Encryption at Rest

KMS key reference translated to target region equivalent

Encryption in Transit

Client-broker and inter-broker encryption settings preserved

Authentication

IAM, TLS, and SCRAM authentication settings preserved

Enhanced Monitoring

Monitoring level preserved (DEFAULT, PER_BROKER, PER_TOPIC_PER_BROKER, PER_TOPIC_PER_PARTITION)

Configuration

References to custom Kafka configurations are translated to target equivalents

Tags

Replicated to target cluster

 

Automatically Selected Resources

When a provisioned MSK cluster is included in an application, Arpio automatically discovers and replicates:

  • VPC Subnets - All subnets used by broker nodes
  • Security Groups - All security groups attached to the cluster
  • KMS Keys - Encryption keys for data at rest (if configured)
  • Kafka Configuration - Custom Kafka configuration and revisions (if configured)
  • Secrets Manager Secrets - SCRAM authentication secrets (if SCRAM is enabled)

Serverless Clusters

Serverless MSK clusters provide automatic provisioning and scaling of compute and storage. Arpio replicates serverless clusters with:

  • Cluster configuration
  • VPC networking settings
  • Authentication methods
  • Encryption settings

Attribute

Translation

Cluster Name

Preserved as-is in the target environment

Kafka Version

Preserved

Subnets

Translated to equivalent subnets in the target VPC based on CIDR blocks

Security Groups

Translated to equivalent security groups in the target VPC

Authentication

IAM authentication settings preserved

Tags

Replicated to target cluster

Automatically Selected Resources

When a serverless MSK cluster is included in an application, Arpio automatically discovers and replicates:

  • VPC Subnets - All subnets used by the cluster
  • Security Groups - All security groups attached to the cluster

SCRAM Authentication

For MSK clusters using SCRAM (Salted Challenge Response Authentication Mechanism), Arpio handles the complete authentication setup including:

  1. Secret Discovery - Arpio automatically discovers all Secrets Manager secrets associated with your MSK cluster for SCRAM authentication
  2. Secret Replication - SCRAM secrets are replicated to the target region with the same username and password credentials
  3. Secret Association - After cluster restoration, Arpio automatically associates the replicated secrets with the target cluster
  4. KMS Encryption - If SCRAM secrets use KMS encryption, the KMS keys are translated to target region equivalents

SCRAM Prerequisites

For successful SCRAM authentication replication:

  • Secrets must be stored in AWS Secrets Manager with the naming pattern AmazonMSK_*
  • Secrets must contain username and password fields in JSON format
  • If secrets use KMS encryption, the KMS key must be included in the application


Kafka Configuration

Arpio replicates custom Kafka configurations used by MSK clusters. A Kafka configuration contains Kafka server properties that control cluster behavior.

Attribute

Translation

Configuration Name

Preserved as-is in the target environment

Description

Preserved

Server Properties

All custom Kafka broker settings are preserved (e.g., auto.create.topics.enable, log.retention.hours)

Kafka Versions

List of compatible Kafka versions preserved

Configuration Revisions

Kafka configurations support multiple revisions. Arpio tracks which revision is used by each cluster and ensures the correct revision is applied during restoration. When a cluster is restored, it uses the same configuration revision as the source cluster.

Automatically Selected Resources

When a Kafka configuration is referenced by an MSK cluster, Arpio automatically:

  • Discovers the configuration
  • Identifies the specific revision in use
  • Replicates the configuration to the target region
  • Applies the correct revision during cluster restoration