Confluent Updated CCAAK Exam Questions and Answers by elwood

In Kafka, the Controller is responsible for managing partition leadership. When a broker that was leader for certain partitions goes down, the Controller immediately detects the failure and:

Triggers a new leader election among the in-sync replicas (ISRs) of those partitions.

Updates the partition metadata to reflect the new leaders and notifies the cluster.

Kafka documentation states:

“When a broker fails, the controller triggers a leader election for all partitions previously led by the failed broker.”

Page Reference:

Kafka: The Definitive Guide, 1st Edition, Chapter 6, p. 190–191

Apache Kafka Documentation: “Kafka Controller and Leader Election”

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Kafka supports multiple SASL mechanisms for authentication, including:

SASL/PLAIN – Username/password

SASL/GSSAPI – Kerberos-based

SASL/OAUTHBEARER – OAuth 2.0 token-based

From Apache Kafka documentation:

“Kafka supports the following SASL mechanisms: GSSAPI (Kerberos), PLAIN, SCRAM, OAUTHBEARER.”

B → SAML20 is not supported.

E → OTP is not a supported SASL mechanism.

Page Reference:

Kafka: The Definitive Guide, 1st Edition, Chapter 9, p. 280–284

Apache Kafka Documentation: Kafka SASL Authentication

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A message (also referred to as a record or event) is the smallest unit of data in Kafka. Each message consists of a key, value, timestamp, and metadata. Messages are stored in partitions and are identified by their offsets.

From Kafka documentation:

“The atomic unit of data in Kafka is a message, which includes a key, value, and headers.”

A → Logical grouping of messages.

B → Correct: Base-level data structure.

C → A topic holds partitions, not messages directly.

D → Refers to the position of a message, not the message itself.

Page Reference:

Kafka: The Definitive Guide, 1st Edition, Chapter 4, p. 120

Apache Kafka Documentation: Message Structure

Kafka follows a specific sequence for evaluating permissions:

If a user is listed as a Super User → Access granted.

Otherwise, Kafka checks if there's an explicit Allow ACL → Grants access.

If not allowed, it checks for an explicit Deny ACL → Denies access.

If no ACL matches → Denied by default.

From Apache Kafka documentation:

“The evaluation order is: Superuser → Allow ACL → Deny ACL → Default deny.”

Page Reference:

Kafka: The Definitive Guide, 1st Edition, Chapter 9, p. 286

Apache Kafka Documentation: “Kafka Authorization – Evaluation Order”