Can Kafka nodes have different configuration(s) within same cluster

Question

I noticed that Kafka Admin API in Java allows us to see broker configurations by using describesConfigs . But it allows to see configurations by Node. Does that mean that each Node in same cluster/broker can have different configurations?

Answer 1

Some properties are always different - broker.id and advertised.listeners , for example.

For others, it'll cause unexpected behavior. For example, the log cleaner could be disabled on one broker, causing compaction to stop working. Or the default topic partition count / replication factor could be mixed, causing unexpected downtime during app development if you don't pre-create your topics with defined values.