Create an Inkless Kafka service

Create an Inkless Apache Kafka® service on Aiven Cloud or using Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC).

Prerequisites

• Access to the Aiven Console
• An Aiven project where you can create Kafka services

Create an Inkless service on Aiven Cloud

Inkless services are available on the Professional tier. On Aiven Cloud, configure the service by selecting ingress capacity and retention.

Console

1. In the Aiven Console, open the project and select Services.
2. Click Create service.
3. Select Apache Kafka®.
4. In Service tier, select Professional.
5. In Cluster type, select Inkless.
6. In Deployment mode, select Aiven cloud.
7. Select a cloud provider and region.
8. Select the Ingress capacity for the service.
9. Optional: Enable Diskless topics. You can enable diskless topics later in Service settings > Advanced configuration.
10. Select a Retention period.
11. In Service basics, enter:
    • Name: Enter a name for the service. You cannot change the service name after creation.
    • Tags: Optional. Add resource tags to organize your services.
12. Review the Service summary, and click Create service.

CLI

Create an Inkless Kafka service on Aiven Cloud using the Aiven CLI.

1. List available Inkless offerings for the project:

   avn inkless offering list \
     --organization-id ORGANIZATION_ID \
     --project PROJECT_NAME

   The command returns available offerings with their maximum ingress and egress throughput.

2. Optional: Filter offerings by required ingress throughput:

   avn inkless offering list \
     --organization-id ORGANIZATION_ID \
     --project PROJECT_NAME \
     --ingress REQUIRED_MBPS

3. View pricing rates for the offerings:

   avn inkless offering rates \
     --organization-id ORGANIZATION_ID \
     --project PROJECT_NAME \
     --cloud-provider CLOUD_PROVIDER

   Optional: Filter rates by offering with --offering-name OFFERING_NAME or by region with --cloud-name CLOUD_NAME.

4. Create the Inkless Kafka service using an offering as the plan:

   avn service create SERVICE_NAME \
     --project PROJECT_NAME \
     --service-type kafka \
     --cloud CLOUD_REGION \
     --plan OFFERING_NAME \
     -c kafka_version=4.0 \
     -c tiered_storage.enabled=true \
     -c inkless.enabled=true

Parameters:

• ORGANIZATION_ID: Organization ID that owns the project.
• PROJECT_NAME: Aiven project name.
• CLOUD_PROVIDER: Cloud provider, such as aws, google, or azure.
• CLOUD_REGION: Cloud region for the service, such as aws-us-east-1.
• OFFERING_NAME: Inkless offering returned by avn inkless offering list.
• SERVICE_NAME: Name of the Kafka service.

Optional: To enable diskless topics when creating the service, add this option to the create command:

-c kafka_diskless.enabled=true

You can also enable diskless topics later in the service configuration.

Create an Inkless service on Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC)

You can run Inkless Kafka clusters in your own cloud account using Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC). Inkless on BYOC supports classic and diskless topics.

Before creating services on BYOC, configure a BYOC environment. For instructions, see Create a custom cloud (BYOC).

Console

1. In the Aiven Console, open the project and select Services.
2. Click Create service.
3. Select Apache Kafka®.
4. In Service tier, select Professional.
5. In Cluster type, select Inkless.
6. In Deployment mode, select Bring your own cloud (BYOC).
7. In Cloud, select your BYOC environment and region.
8. Select a plan.
9. In Service basics, enter:
   • Name: Enter a name for the service. You cannot change the name after creation.
   • Tags: Optional. Add resource tags to organize your services.
10. Review the Service summary, and click Create service.

CLI

Create an Inkless Kafka service in a BYOC environment:

1. List available Kafka plans for your BYOC cloud and region. Plans that support Inkless end with -inkless.

   avn service plans --service-type kafka --cloud CUSTOM_CLOUD_REGION

2. Create the service using an Inkless-capable plan:

   avn service create SERVICE_NAME \
    --project PROJECT_NAME \
    --service-type kafka \
    --cloud CUSTOM_CLOUD_REGION \
    --plan INKLESS_PLAN \
    -c kafka_version=4.0 \
    -c tiered_storage.enabled=true \
    -c kafka_diskless.enabled=true

   note

   Set both tiered_storage.enabled=true and kafka_diskless.enabled=true.

Parameters:

• SERVICE_NAME: Name of the Kafka service.
• PROJECT_NAME: Aiven project name.
• CUSTOM_CLOUD_REGION: BYOC region, such as custom-aws-eu-central-1.
• INKLESS_PLAN: Inkless-capable plan for the selected BYOC environment.

After creating the service, create topics to store data streams. To create topics, see Create Kafka topics.

Related pages

• Create a Kafka topic
• Diskless topics overview
• Generate sample data