How is Kafka physically arranged in the system — is it part of a service or on a separate machine?

Apache Kafka is a distributed messaging system that is typically deployed on a separate cluster of servers, rather than inside a single service.

Physical organization:

• Kafka operates as a standalone set of brokers (servers), each running on a separate machine or virtual machine.
• The Kafka cluster consists of multiple brokers to ensure fault tolerance and scalability.
• Clients (producers and consumers) connect to these brokers over the network.
• Data storage occurs on the disks of brokers, allowing messages to be stored and delivered.

Thus, Kafka is a standalone service deployed on dedicated machines or containers, not a library or component within another service.