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Manage Consumer Groups

This article covers the fundamental principles of Consumer Groups, including related restrictions, and describes procedures such as viewing, modifying, and deleting Consumer Groups.

Consumer Group​

According to the domain model of Apache Kafka®, a Consumer Group functions as a load balancing group within the Kafka ecosystem, enabling multiple consumers to exhibit consistent consumption patterns.

Unlike individual consumers, a Consumer Group represents not an active entity but a logical resource. Within Kafka, horizontal scalability and high availability for disaster recovery are facilitated by initiating multiple consumers within a Consumer Group.

Viewing Consumer Group Details​

Operational Steps​

  1. Log into the environment console, select Instance List from the left navigation menu. Then, in the instance list, click the name of the desired instance to access its internal features.

  2. From the left navigation menu, select Consumer Groups, and then locate the desired Consumer Group on the Consumer Groups page.

  3. Click on the desired Consumer Group to see summary information, client connection specifics, subscription relationships, consumption progress, and associated metrics data.

Resetting Consumer Offsets​

Users have the option to reset the consumer offset either to clear any backlog of unwanted messages or to skip directly to a specific timestamp for consuming messages from that point forward, regardless of whether prior messages have been consumed.

When resetting the consumer offset, it's crucial that the corresponding Consumer Group is in an Empty state, which means all associated consumers must be offline.

Steps​

  1. Identify the Consumer Group requiring the offset reset and click Reset Offset on its Details Page.

  2. The following reset options are available based on specific needs:

    1. Reset based on relative time: last 5 minutes, last 1 hour, last 24 hours

    2. Reset to a specific timestamp: custom timestamp

    3. Resetting by relative position: latest offset, earliest offset

    4. Resetting by specified offset: custom offset

Delete Consumer Group​

After deleting a Consumer Group, all consumers under that Consumer Group may be unable to consume messages, and previous state data may be irrecoverable. Thus, it is crucial first to confirm that the business no longer requires it, ensuring that the Consumer Group is in a Dead or Empty state.

Procedure Steps​

  1. Log in to the environment console, click on Instance List in the left navigation bar. Then, in the instance list, click on the target instance name to access the instance's internal features.

  2. In the left navigation bar, click on Consumer Group, then find the target Consumer Group on the Consumer Group list page.

  3. Click the operation button on the right, click delete, and complete the deletion after confirming for the second time.