Automic Automation / Apache Kafka Agent Integration

Apache Kafka is an open-source, highly scalable end-to-end event streaming platform with a publish/subscribe-based messaging model. It builds data pipelines by collecting, processing, storing, analyzing and transmitting messages (event streams). Producer jobs publish messages, Consumer jobs subscribe to them. By connecting Automic Automation with your Apache Kafka platform, this integration lets you produce (publish) and consume (listen to) messages from Apache Kafka topics from Automic Automation.

The Apache Kafka Agent Integration gives you full access to Automic Automation's powerful workload automation, scheduling and monitoring capabilities. It allows you to orchestrate and automate actions based on the consumed/published messages. You can build Automic Automation Workflows that combine Apache Kafka and Automic Automation objects to orchestrate processes in hybrid environments.

Automic Automation pulls the information from the Apache Kafka topic. In the Automic Automation's Process Monitoring perspective you can access the Workflow monitor, where all the tasks included in the jobs and their remote statuses are displayed. Automic Automation also provides downloadable execution reports.

This integration capability, like all Automic Automation integrations, can support service orchestration Workflows. Such Workflows orchestrate automated processes that run across multiple platforms, domains, and applications to deliver a specific IT service. For more information, see About Service Orchestration in the Automic Automation help, which is available on docs.automic.com.

Important!

The Apache Kafka Agent integrates the target system with Automic Automation. This means that the Agent lives within an Automic Automation system and it gives you access to all its functions and features. If you are not familiar with Automic Automation or if you need specific information about any of its functions, use this Agent-specific help in combination with the Automic Automation product documentation that you can find at Automic Automation documentation.

Securing the Connection through TLS/SSL

The Agents and the Automation Engine communicate using TLS/SSL, which requires using trusted certificates to prove the identity of the respective communication partner.

When an Agent communicates with an on-premises Automic Automation system, it establishes the connection to the Java communication process (JCP). When communicating with the Automic Automation Kubernetes Edition, it established the connection to an ingress / HTTPS load balancer. Regardless of the environment you use, you have to make sure that you have the required certificates in place.

Important!

Make sure you are familiar with the TLS/SSL and certificate implementation before installing and/or upgrading the respective component. For more information, see the Automic Automation documentation at:

Release Cycles

The release cycles of the Apache Kafka Agent Integration are independent of the Automic Automation ones.

The Apache Kafka Agent Integration orchestrates processes across multiple cloud platforms. The release cycles for the integrations with each of those cloud platforms are also independent of one another.

For more information, see Compatibility Information.

Important Consideration

To be able to implement (install and configure) and work with the Apache Kafka Agent Integration (configure jobs and include them in other Automic Automation objects), a sound knowledge of Automic Automation is required.

If you are new to Automic Automation, we strongly recommend that you take the following courses before beginning with this integration:

For all users:

For administrators:

For developers and object designers

This documentation describes how to set up the integration and how to work with Automic Automation Consumer and producer Jobs: