Delivering data from an Apache Kafka® queue to OpenSearch

Written by

Yandex Cloud

Updated at May 5, 2025

Required paid resources
Getting started
Prepare the test data
Configure the target cluster
Prepare and activate your transfer
Test the transfer
Delete the resources you created

A Managed Service for OpenSearch cluster can get data from Apache Kafka® topics in real time.

To run data delivery:

If you no longer need the resources you created, delete them.

Required paid resources

The support cost includes:

Managed Service for Apache Kafka® cluster fee: Using computing resources allocated to hosts (including ZooKeeper hosts) and disk space (see Apache Kafka® pricing).
Per-transfer fee: Using computing resources and the number of transferred data rows (see Data Transfer pricing).
Managed Service for OpenSearch cluster fee: Using computing resources allocated to hosts (including hosts with the MANAGER role) and disk space (see Managed Service for OpenSearch pricing).
Fee for using public IP addresses:
- For Managed Service for OpenSearch cluster hosts.
- For Managed Service for Apache Kafka® cluster hosts with public access enabled.
Learn more about the Virtual Private Cloud pricing plans.

Getting started

Prepare the data transfer infrastructure:
Manually

Terraform
1. Create a Managed Service for Apache Kafka® source cluster in any suitable configuration. To connect to the cluster from the user's local machine rather than doing so from the Yandex Cloud cloud network, enable public access to the cluster when creating it.
2. In the source cluster, create a topic named sensors.
3. In the source cluster, create a user named mkf-user with the ACCESS_ROLE_PRODUCER and ACCESS_ROLE_CONSUMER permissions for the new topic.
4. Create a Managed Service for OpenSearch target cluster in any suitable configuration with the following settings:
  - In the same availability zone as the source cluster.
  - With public access to hosts with the DATA role.
5. To connect to the cluster from the user's local machine, configure security groups:
  - Managed Service for Apache Kafka®.
  - Managed Service for OpenSearch.
1. If you do not have Terraform yet, install it.
2. Get the authentication credentials. You can add them to environment variables or specify them later in the provider configuration file.
3. Configure and initialize a provider. There is no need to create a provider configuration file manually, you can download it.
4. Place the configuration file in a separate working directory and specify the parameter values. If you did not add the authentication credentials to environment variables, specify them in the configuration file.
5. Download the data-transfer-mkf-mos.tf configuration file to the same working directory.
  
  This file describes:
  - Network.
  - Subnet.
  - Security group and rules required to connect to the Managed Service for Apache Kafka® and Managed Service for OpenSearch clusters.
  - Managed Service for Apache Kafka® source cluster.
  - Apache Kafka® topic named sensors.
  - Apache Kafka® user named mkf-user with the ACCESS_ROLE_PRODUCER and ACCESS_ROLE_CONSUMER access permissions to the sensors topic.
  - Managed Service for OpenSearch target cluster.
  - Transfer.
6. In the data-transfer-mkf-mos.tf file, specify these variables:
  - kf_version: Apache Kafka® version in the source cluster.
  - kf_user_password: mkf-user user password.
  - os_version: OpenSearch version in the source cluster.
  - os_user_password: admin user password.
  - transfer_enabled: Set to 0 to ensure that no transfer is created until you create endpoints manually.
7. Make sure the Terraform configuration files are correct using this command:
  terraform validate
  If there are any errors in the configuration files, Terraform will point them out.
8. Create the required infrastructure:
  1. Run this command to view the planned changes:
    
    terraform plan
    
    If you described the configuration correctly, the terminal will display a list of the resources to update and their parameters. This is a verification step that does not apply changes to your resources.
  2. If everything looks correct, apply the changes:
    
    Run this command:
    
    terraform apply
    
    Confirm updating the resources.
    
    Wait for the operation to complete.
  All the required resources will be created in the specified folder. You can check resource availability and their settings in the management console.
Install the utilities:
- kafkacat to read and write data to Apache Kafka® topics.
```
sudo apt update && sudo apt install --yes kafkacat
```
  Check that you can use it to connect to the Managed Service for Apache Kafka® source cluster over SSL.
- jq for JSON file stream processing.
```
sudo apt update && sudo apt-get install --yes jq
```

Prepare the test data

Let's assume the Apache Kafka® sensors topic in the source cluster receives data from car sensors in JSON format.

Create a local sample.json file with the following test data:

sample.json

{
    "device_id": "iv9a94th6rzt********",
    "datetime": "2020-06-05 17:27:00",
    "latitude": 55.70329032,
    "longitude": 37.65472196,
    "altitude": 427.5,
    "speed": 0,
    "battery_voltage": 23.5,
    "cabin_temperature": 17,
    "fuel_level": null
}
{
    "device_id": "rhibbh3y08qm********",
    "datetime": "2020-06-06 09:49:54",
    "latitude": 55.71294467,
    "longitude": 37.66542005,
    "altitude": 429.13,
    "speed": 55.5,
    "battery_voltage": null,
    "cabin_temperature": 18,
    "fuel_level": 32
}
{
    "device_id": "iv9a94th6rzt********",
    "datetime": "2020-06-07 15:00:10",
    "latitude": 55.70985913,
    "longitude": 37.62141918,
    "altitude": 417.0,
    "speed": 15.7,
    "battery_voltage": 10.3,
    "cabin_temperature": 17,
    "fuel_level": null
}

You can provide data to the Managed Service for OpenSearch cluster as the admin user with the superuser role; however, it is more secure to create separate users with limited privileges for each job. For more information, see Managing OpenSearch users.

Create a role with the create_index and write privileges for all indexes (*).
Create a user and assign this role to them.

Prepare and activate your transfer

Create an endpoint for the Apache Kafka® source:

Endpoint parameters:

Connection settings:
- Connection type: Managed Service for Apache Kafka cluster.
  - Managed Service for Apache Kafka cluster: Select the source cluster from the list.
  - Authentication: SASL.
    - Username: mkf-user.
    - Password: Enter the user password.
- Topic full name: sensors.

Advanced settings → Conversion rules:

Conversion rules: json.

Data scheme: JSON specification.

Insert the data schema in JSON format:

json

[
    {
        "name": "device_id",
        "type": "utf8",
        "key": true
    },
    {
        "name": "datetime",
        "type": "utf8"
    },
    {
        "name": "latitude",
        "type": "double"
    },
    {
        "name": "longitude",
        "type": "double"
    },
    {
        "name": "altitude",
        "type": "double"
    },
    {
        "name": "speed",
        "type": "double"
    },
    {
        "name": "battery_voltage",
        "type": "double"
    },
    {
        "name": "cabin_temperature",
        "type": "uint16"
    },
    {
        "name": "fuel_level",
        "type": "uint16"
    }
]

Create an endpoint for the OpenSearch target:

Endpoint parameters → Connection:
- Connection type: Managed Service for OpenSearch cluster.
  - Managed Service for OpenSearch cluster: Select the source cluster from the list.
- User: Enter the username.
- Password: Enter the user password.
Create a transfer:
Manually

Terraform
1. Create a transfer of the Replication type that will use the created endpoints.
2. Activate the transfer and wait for its status to change to Replicating.
1. In the data-transfer-mkf-mos.tf file, specify these variables:
  - source_endpoint_id: Source endpoint ID.
  - target_endpoint_id: Target endpoint ID.
  - transfer_enabled: 1 to create a transfer.
2. Make sure the Terraform configuration files are correct using this command:
  terraform validate
  If there are any errors in the configuration files, Terraform will point them out.
3. Create the required infrastructure:
  1. Run this command to view the planned changes:
    
    terraform plan
    
    If you described the configuration correctly, the terminal will display a list of the resources to update and their parameters. This is a verification step that does not apply changes to your resources.
  2. If everything looks correct, apply the changes:
    
    Run this command:
    
    terraform apply
    
    Confirm updating the resources.
    
    Wait for the operation to complete.
4. The transfer will be activated automatically. Wait for its status to change to Replicating.

Test the transfer

Make sure the data from the topic in the source Managed Service for Apache Kafka® cluster is being moved to the Managed Service for OpenSearch cluster:

Send data from the sample.json file to the Managed Service for Apache Kafka® sensors topic using jq and kafkacat:

jq -rc . sample.json | kafkacat -P \
   -b <broker_host_FQDN>:9091 \
   -t sensors \
   -k key \
   -X security.protocol=SASL_SSL \
   -X sasl.mechanisms=SCRAM-SHA-512 \
   -X sasl.username="mkf-user" \
   -X sasl.password="<user_password_in_source_cluster>" \
   -X ssl.ca.location=/usr/local/share/ca-certificates/Yandex/YandexInternalRootCA.crt -Z

To learn more about setting up an SSL certificate and working with kafkacat, see Connecting to a Apache Kafka® cluster from applications.

Check that the the Managed Service for OpenSearch cluster's sensors index contains the data that was sent:
Bash

OpenSearch Dashboards
Run this command:
```
curl \
    --user <username_in_target_cluster>:<user_password_in_target_cluster> \
    --cacert ~/.opensearch/root.crt \
    --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
    --request GET 'https://<ID_of_OpenSearch_host_with_DATA_role>.rw.mdb.yandexcloud.net:9200/sensors/_search?pretty'
```
1. Connect to the target cluster using OpenSearch Dashboards.
2. Select the Global tenant.
3. Open the control panel by clicking .
4. Under OpenSearch Dashboards, select Discover.
5. In the CHANGE INDEX PATTERN field, select the sensors index.

Delete the resources you created

Note

Before deleting the resources you created, deactivate the transfer.

Some resources are not free of charge. To avoid paying for them, delete the resources you no longer need:

Delete the transfer.
Delete the endpoints for both the source and target.

Delete the other resources depending on how they were created:

Manually

Using Terraform

In the terminal window, go to the directory containing the infrastructure plan.

Warning

Make sure the directory has no Terraform manifests with the resources you want to keep. Terraform deletes all resources that were created using the manifests in the current directory.
Delete resources:
1. Run this command:
```
terraform destroy
```
2. Confirm deleting the resources and wait for the operation to complete.
All the resources described in the Terraform manifests will be deleted.

Delivering data from an Apache Kafka® queue to OpenSearch

Required paid resourcesRequired paid resources

Getting startedGetting started

Prepare the test dataPrepare the test data

Configure the target clusterConfigure the target cluster

Prepare and activate your transferPrepare and activate your transfer

Test the transferTest the transfer

Delete the resources you createdDelete the resources you created

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