Kafka10.1 heartbeat.interval.ms, session.timeout.ms and max.poll.interval.ms

Question

I am using kafka 0.10.1.1 and confused with the following 3 properties.

heartbeat.interval.ms
session.timeout.ms
max.poll.interval.ms

heartbeat.interval.ms - This was added in 0.10.1 and it will send heartbeat between polls. session.timeout.ms - This is to start rebalancing if no request to kafka and it gets reset on every poll. max.poll.interval.ms - This is across the poll.

But, when does kafka starts rebalancing? Why do we need these 3? What are the default values for all of them?

Thanks

Answer 1

Assuming we are talking about Kafka 0.10.1.0 or upwards where each consumer instance employs two threads to function. One is user thread from which poll is called; the other is heartbeat thread that specially takes care of heartbeat things.

session.timeout.ms is for heartbeat thread. If coordinator fails to get any heartbeat from a consumer before this time interval elapsed, it marks consumer as failed and triggers a new round of rebalance.

max.poll.interval.ms is for user thread. If message processing logic is too heavy to cost larger than this time interval, coordinator explicitly have the consumer leave the group and also triggers a new round of rebalance.

heartbeat.interval.ms is used to have other healthy consumers aware of the rebalance much faster. If coordinator triggers a rebalance, other consumers will only know of this by receiving the heartbeat response with REBALANCE_IN_PROGRESS exception encapsulated. Quicker the heartbeat request is sent, faster the consumer knows it needs to rejoin the group.

Suggested values:
session.timeout.ms : a relatively low value, 10 seconds for instance.
max.poll.interval.ms: based on your processing requirements
heartbeat.interval.ms: a relatively low value, better 1/3 of the session.timeout.ms