We just released version 0.5.0 of the Strimzi Registry Operator (see release notes). Strimzi Registry Operator helps you run a Confluent Schema Registry for a Kafka cluster that’s managed by the fabulous Strimzi operator for Kubernetes. The Schema Registry allows you to efficiently encode your Kafka messages in Avro, while centrally managing their schemas in the registry.

With the Strimzi Registry Operator, you deploy a Kubernetes resources like this:

apiVersion: roundtable.lsst.codes/v1beta1
kind: StrimziSchemaRegistry
metadata:
  name: confluent-schema-registry
spec:
  listener: tls
  securityProtocol: tls
  compatibilityLevel: forward

The operator deploys a Schema Registry server based on that StrimziSchemaRegistry resource and takes care of details like mapping the Kafka listener and converting the mutual TLS certificates into the JKS formatted keystore and truststore required by the Schema Registry.

We at Rubin Observatory’s SQuaRE team created the Strimzi Registry Operator back in 2019 to help us deploy an internal Kafka to power our ChatOps. Since then, this technology has become critical for other Rubin applications like the alert broker and the engineering facilities database (telemetry from the telescope facility). We’ve also gotten hints that the operator has been adopted by other Strimzi users, which we’re thrilled to hear of. Open source in action! ✨

To learn more, take a look at the Strimzi Registry Operator repository on GitHub.