Documentation

The public documentation stays at the product and deployment level: clear enough for evaluation, pilot, and rollout, while making the Kerberos, SASL/GSSAPI, RBAC, and production use model explicit for real Apache Kafka environments

Product overview KafkaKombat is a Kerberos-first web UI for working with one or multiple Kafka clusters that can be grouped into access zones.
Key workflows Cluster, broker, topic, and consumer group browsing; lag analysis; problems view; message browsing; topic administration; reset offsets; and topic clone, recreate, or clear workflows.
Access model Global Admin and Zone Admin roles are supported, together with a zone-based access model and application RBAC layered on top of infrastructure access control.
Message handling The product supports a protobuf descriptors registry, a protobuf-aware read path, topic-level masking policy, server-side masking, and safe rendering of protected payloads.
Service data PostgreSQL is used to store service data and operational application configuration.

Kerberos, SASL/GSSAPI, and user-ticket execution

KafkaKombat is designed for Apache Kafka environments where Kerberos is part of the real runtime model rather than a checkbox in a demo configuration. This includes SASL/GSSAPI-based Kafka client authentication, krb5.conf, ticket cache handling, and the operational expectation that security rules should remain visible in the UI path instead of being bypassed by a generic shared identity

Kerberos is the authentication base for the target class of environments supported by the product.
SASL/GSSAPI is part of the normal Kafka client model for Kerberos-protected Apache Kafka clusters.
User-driven Kafka operations are executed with the user’s own Kerberos ticket rather than a shared service identity for normal UI actions.
Service principal and keytab are reserved for backend and background functions that do not operate on behalf of a specific interactive user.

Production status and Apache Kafka compatibility

Used in real environments

KafkaKombat is already used in development and production environments by multiple internal teams working with Kerberos-protected Apache Kafka clusters and a multi-cluster operational setup

Tested compatibility

KafkaKombat has been tested with Apache Kafka versions 3.0.0 through 4.2.0. If support for additional Kafka versions is required, feedback can be sent through the contact page or through GitHub issues

Roles, LDAP-backed RBAC, and access zones

Global Admin

Global Admin is the full administrative role used for zone management, cluster assignment, administrative policies, and global product control

Zone Admin

Zone Admin is an administrative role limited to the assigned access zones and their clusters. This keeps operational power close to the owning team without making all administration global

LDAP-backed RBAC

Infrastructure access is not treated as enough on its own. KafkaKombat adds application RBAC, zone-based access, and role decisions that can follow LDAP groups and the application catalog model

Message browsing, masking, and protobuf-aware read paths

KafkaKombat is not limited to generic topic listing. The product includes safe message browsing for operational workflows, topic-level decode configuration, protobuf-aware rendering, and topic-level masking policies that are enforced server-side rather than left as a cosmetic frontend preference

Documents shipped with the distribution

README

A short product overview, core principles, key capabilities, access model, and the baseline startup scenario

INSTALL

A step-by-step guide for environment preparation, running the installer, starting the application, and performing post-install verification

What the public documentation is and is not

The website does not try to replace internal engineering documentation. It gives the public-facing product outline: what the project is for, which Kerberos and SASL/GSSAPI model it expects, how RBAC and zones work at a high level, and which workflows it covers. Deep implementation details remain part of the distribution and of environment-specific adaptation