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Integration / Apache Kafka Interview questions

How do you configure MirrorMaker for cross-cluster replication?

MirrorMaker (MM2, built on the Kafka Connect framework) continuously replicates topics from a source Kafka cluster to a target cluster, typically for disaster recovery, geo-distribution, or feeding a separate analytics cluster without impacting the primary one.

# mm2.properties
clusters=primary, backup
primary.bootstrap.servers=primary-broker:9092
backup.bootstrap.servers=backup-broker:9092

primary->backup.enabled=true
primary->backup.topics=orders,payments


connect-mirror-maker.sh mm2.properties

Because it's Connect-based, MM2 runs as source connectors (one direction of replication per configured flow) and inherits Connect's scaling, offset-tracking, and fault-tolerance behavior rather than being a bespoke standalone tool. Replicated topics on the target cluster are prefixed by default with the source cluster's alias (e.g. primary.orders) to avoid naming collisions and make the data's origin traceable; MM2 also replicates consumer group offsets via offset translation, which is what allows a consumer application to fail over from the primary cluster to the backup and resume roughly where it left off, rather than starting from scratch.

What underlying framework is MirrorMaker 2 (MM2) built on?
Why does MM2 prefix replicated topic names with the source cluster's alias by default?

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