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What is a Kafka topic, and how do you choose the number of partitions for it?

SQLmedium0.5 min readPremium
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487
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1,863
across 7 categories
Asked at these companies
Citi
Key Concepts Tested
partition
Expert AnswerPremium
107 wordsInterview-ready
Kafka topic: Category/stream of messages. Partitions enable parallelism—each partition is an ordered log. Choosing partition count: (1) Throughput—more partitions = more parallel consumers. (2) Consumer count—partitions ≥ consumer instances. (3) Ordering—same key goes to same partition; balance parallelism vs key cardinality. (4) Retention—more partitions = more segments. Rule: Start with expected peak throughput / single partition throughput; typically 6–20 for moderate topics....
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