Top 10 Courses to Learn Apache Kafka in 2024 | Best Kafka Courses for Beginners
These are the best Apache Kafka online training courses from Udemy, Coursera, Pluralsight to learn Kafka in 2024
You might have heard about Apache Kafka, the next-generation big data messaging system which is handling billions of messages per day for companies like LinkedIn, Uber, Airbnb, and Twitter.
In the past, I have shared some awesome courses on Big Data, Spark, and Hadoop and many of my readers requested that I share similar suggestions for Apache Kafka. If you are interested in Apache Kafka and looking for some awesome courses to learn online then you have come to the right place.
In this article, I am going to share some of the best Apache Kafka courses to learn online. If you know about big data then there is a good chance that you have also heard about Apache Kafka, the software which can handle data feeds for any organization. It’s a distributed streaming platform developed by the Apache Foundation for building real-time data pipelines.
The biggest advantage of Apache Kafka is its speed and horizontal scalability, which means you can increase capacity and throughput by adding more hardware. This makes it ideal for companies dealing with big data.
Apache Kafka was designed to address large-scale data movement problems and has enabled hundreds of companies to achieve successes that were not otherwise possible with existing messaging systems.
You might not know that Apache Kafka is written in Scala and Java and it aims to provide a unified, high-throughput, low-latency platform for handling real-time data feeds.
10 Best Apache Kafka Courses for Beginners to Learn Online in 2024
Here are the best online courses to learn Apache Kafka for beginners in 2024. These courses are chosen from top learning sites like Udemy, Coursera, and Pluralsight. They are created by Apache Kafka experts and trusted by millions of Kafka learners worldwide. Let’s explore them in detail
1. Apache Kafka Series: Learn Apache Kafka for Beginners
This is another good course to learn Apache Kafka from ground zero. It’s an ideal course for both developers and architects who want to learn the fundamentals of Apache Kafka.
In this course, instructor Stephane Maarek, author of a series of Apache Kafka courses on Udemy will teach you everything about the Apache Kafka ecosystem from its architecture and core concepts to operations.
The course is also hands-on as you will start a personal Kafka Cluster for development purposes and create and configure topics for reading and writing data.
You will also learn to integrate Apache Kafta with popular programming and big data frameworks like Spark, Akka, Scala, and Apache NiFi.
Here is the link to Sign up — Learn Apache Kafka for Beginners
2. Getting Started With Apache Kafka
This is a great course to start learning Apache Kafka from Scratch. In this course, instructor Ryan Plant will teach you everything about the architecture of Apache Kafka which enabled it to scale and perform so reliably.
After the initial overview, the course moves to explain individual components of Apache Kafka, like Kafka Streams for processing real-time data feeds, and how to develop Apache Kafka solutions in Java.
After this course, you should have all the necessary knowledge to build your own, next-generation big data solutions with Apache Kafka.
Here is the link to join the course — Getting Started with Apache Kafka
By the way, you need a Pluralsight membership to access this course, which costs around $29 per month. But, if you want, you can get access to this course for a fee by signing up for a 10-day free trial.
3. Apache Kafka Series — Kafka Streams for Data Processing
This is another awesome course on Apache Kafka by Stephane Maarek. This course is focused on Kafka Streams, a client-side library for building microservices, where input and output data are stored in a Kafka cluster.
In this course, you will learn how to use the Kafka Streams API with hands-on examples in Java 8. Though, before attempting this course you should have a good understanding of both Java 8 and Apache Kafka.
You will also learn about KStream and KTable, simple and advanced operations, and Exactly Once Semantics, or EOS, like how Kafka enables EOS and how to activate it in Kafka Streams.
Here is the link to Sign up — Apache Kafka Streams for Data Processing
4. Distributed Programming in Java in Coursera
This is an advanced course for Java programmers who are willing to learn more about Distributed programming and not just Kafka. It teaches learners (industry professionals and students) the fundamental concepts of Distributed Programming in the context of Java 8.
Distributed programming enables developers to use multiple nodes in a data center to increase throughput and/or reduce the latency of selected applications. This course is also part of the Parallel, Concurrent, and Distributed Programming in Java Specialization
After completing this course, you should understand how to use popular distributed programming frameworks for Java programs, including Hadoop, Spark, Sockets, Remote Method Invocation (RMI), Multicast Sockets, Kafka, Message Passing Interface (MPI), as well as different approaches to combine distribution with multithreading.
Here is the link to Sign up — Distributed Programming in Java in Coursera
And, if you find Coursera courses useful, which they are because they are created by reputed companies like Google, IBM, Amazon, and the best universities around the world, I suggest you join the Coursera Plus, a subscription plan from Coursera
This single subscription gives you unlimited access to their most popular courses, specialization, professional certificate, and guided projects. It cost around $399/year but its completely worth of your money as you get unlimited certificates.
5. Apache Kafka Series — Kafka Cluster Setup and Administration
This is the third course in the Apache Kafka series by Stéphane Maarek on Udemy. In this course, you will learn about Kafka Cluster Setup and Administration.
You will set up a ZooKeeper and Kafka cluster on AWS and learn how to deploy Kafka in production. You will also set up a ZooKeeper Cluster and understand its role in Kafka.
This is an ideal course for system Administrators or Architects who want to learn how to set up a Kafka Cluster on multiple servers
Here is the link to Sign up — Apache Kafka Cluster Setup and Administration
6. Apache Kafka Training by Edureka
Edureka’s Apache Kafka Certification Training helps you in learning the concepts about Kafka Architecture, Configuring Kafka Cluster, Kafka Producer, Kafka Consumer, Kafka Monitoring.
It is designed to provide insights into the Integration of Kafka with Hadoop, Storm, and Spark, You will also understand how to use Kafka Stream APIs, implement Twitter Streaming with Kafka, and Flume through real-life cases studies.
Here is the link to Sign up —Apache Kafka Training by Edureka
4. Apache Kafka Certification Training
This course is part of the Big Data Hadoop Architect master’s program in SimpliLearn and it will teach you everything about Apache Kafka you want to know. It’s a certification course so it covers a variety of topics.
In this Apache Kafka training course, you will learn about Kafka architecture, installation, interfaces, and configuration.
The course starts with an overview of big data and then explains ZooKeeper and Apache Kafka from the introduction to installation.
Here is the link to Sign up — Apache Kafka Certification Training
8. Apache Kafka Series — Kafka Connect Hands-on Learning
Kafka Connect is a tool for scalable and reliable streaming data between Apache Kafka and other data systems. Apache Kafka Connect is a common framework for Apache Kafka producers and consumers.
Apache Kafka Connect offers an API, Runtime, and REST Service to enable developers to define connectors that move large data sets into and out of Apache Kafka in real-time.
In this course, you will learn the Kafka Connector deployment, configuration, and management with hands-on exercises. You will also learn about distributed and standalone modes to scale up to a large, centrally managed service supporting an entire organization or scale down to development, testing, and small production deployments.
Here is the link to Sign up —Apache Kafka Series — Kafka Connect Hands-on Learning
9. Apache Kafka Series — Confluent Schema Registry & REST Proxy
This course is the first and only available Kafka Schema Registry and Kafka REST Proxy course on the web. Apache Kafka is increasingly becoming a must-have skill.
This course will set you up for fast success using Avro in Kafka, and the Confluent Components — the Kafka Schema Registry and the Kafka REST Proxy. The job market will need people with your newly acquired skillset!
Here is the link to Sign up — Apache Kafka Series — Confluent Schema Registry & REST Proxy
10. Apache Kafka Series — Kafka Security (SSL SASL Kerberos ACL)
Security is a key aspect everywhere and the Apache Kafka cluster is no exception. More and more Apache Kafka clusters are being secured or want to be secured.
In this course, you’ll learn Kafka Security, with Encryption (SSL), Authentication (SSL & SASL), and Authorization (ACL). If you’ve struggled setting up Kafka Security or can’t make sense of the documentation, this course is for you
Btw, this course only deals with SSL for encryption & Authentication and SASL Kerberos, not other mechanisms. It also does provide an overview to enable security in a multi-broker setup, but that last part is left for the student to investigate and practice.
Here is the link to Sign up —Apache Kafka Series — Kafka Security (SSL SASL Kerberos ACL)
That’s all about some of the best courses to learn Apache Kafka for Java developers. Apache Kafka is a groundbreaking technology and power to more than 2000+ companies for their high-speed messaging need and a good knowledge of Apache Kafka will go a long way to boost your career. I strongly recommend experienced Java developers, tech leads, and solution architects to learn and understand Apache Kafka.
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Thanks for reading this course so far. If you like these Apache Kafka online training courses and certifications then please share them with your friends and colleagues. If you have any questions or feedback then please drop a note.
P. S. — If you want to learn Apache Kafka and looking for free resources then you can also checkout Apache Kafka and Spring Boot (Consumer, Producer) course on Udemy. It’s completely free and help you to learn Kafka basics.
