Install using Docker

You can install Confluent Platform by using Docker images. You can install the entire platform or individual components.

Images are available on DockerHub for each component of the Confluent Platform. The source files for the images are available on GitHub. From GitHub you can extend and rebuild the images and upload them to your own DockerHub repository.

For more information, see Docker Image Reference.


You should consider the following before using the Docker images.

Multi-node Environment
For more information, see Configure Multi-Node Environment.
Persistent Data (Mounted Volumes)
When deploying the Kafka and ZooKeeper images, you should always use Mounting Docker External Volumes for the file systems those images use for their persistent data. This ensures that the containers will retain their proper state when stopped and restarted. The other images maintain their state directly in Kafka topics, so mounted volumes are not usually required for those containers.
Bridge Networking vs. Host Networking

Bridge networking is currently only supported on a single host. For multiple hosts, you must use overlay networks which are not currently supported. To expose Kafka to clients outside of the bridge network, you must find the container IP and put it in advertised.listeners. This can be difficult to achieve depending on how you’re using the images. Furthermore, it can add a network hop and may not be as performant as the host network, which shares the network stack. Host networking is the recommended option in the following cases:

Adding Connectors to the Kafka Connect Image

Here are the methods to add new connectors to the Kafka Connect image.

  • Build a new Docker image that has the connector installed. You can follow the examples found in Examples: Extending the Docker Images. You must make sure that the connector JARs are on the CLASSPATH for the Connect service (the default location of /usr/share/java/kafka-connect-* is the recommended location).
  • Add the connector JARs via volumes. If you don’t want to create a new Docker image, please see our documentation on Examples: Extending the Docker Images to configure the cp-kafka-connect container with external JARs.
Supported Java
Untested Features
The images are not currently tested on Docker Swarm.

Tutorials and Demos

The following tutorials leverage these examples and can help you get started.