What is a broker and ZooKeeper in Kafka?

In Kafka, a broker is a server that stores and transmits messages. It receives data from producers, saves them in topics, and delivers to consumers. There can be multiple brokers, which ensures scalability and fault tolerance.

ZooKeeper is a coordination service that Kafka uses to manage the cluster. It stores metadata about brokers, topics, partitions, monitors broker status, and helps in selecting a leader for each partition. ZooKeeper ensures consistency and simplifies Kafka cluster management.