Confluent Cloud

1. Get your Lenses license key 

Sign up with Lenses and download your license key.

2. Sign up for Confluent Cloud and create a Kafka 

Confluent Cloud Apache Kafka is a fully managed streaming platform, deployable in the cloud of your choice.

Start by signing up for a Confluent Cloud account. Follow the in-product instructions to launch a Kafka cluster within the Confluent Cloud user interface.

Then, enable remote access by creating API keys.

Create a Data integration API key 

1. From Data integration API keys, select Create Key.

   

2. For this guide purpose we will proceed with Global access.

   

3. Download your key.

Gather 1 connection endpoint 

1. Kafka endpoint. Go to Cluster settings. We will be using the Bootstrap server endpoint.

3. Run Lenses with Docker 

Run the following in a terminal:

docker run -e LENSES_PORT=8080 -p 8080:8080 lensesio/lenses

Wait for this message in the logs:

2021-12-16 18:17:04,322 INFO  [i.l.b.r.HttpServer] [ioapp-compute-6] Lenses http server started and listening to requests.

Now your Lenses is up and running.

4. Login 

Head to http://localhost:8080.

Login as admin:

• User: admin
• Password: admin

5. Wizard Setup 

On the Bootstrap Servers form add the kafka endpoint from above. Select as Security Protocol SASL SSL with SASL Mechanism PLAIN.

On the JAAS Configuration update the username and password from the respective fields Key and Secret of the API key created above:

org.apache.kafka.common.security.plain.PlainLoginModule required 
username="[Your_API_KEY]" 
password="[Your_API_KEY_SECRET]"

Click on Test Kafka Brokers. And you should get the message: Validation completed successfully:

6. License 

Add your Lenses license. Copy and paste the JSON file you downloaded from your email. Lenses will check that the license is valid.

7. Boot 

Click on Save & Boot Lenses. Lenses will finish configuring itself.

8. Eureka! 

Next steps 

• Learn how to use Lenses.
  

Additional Kafka features 

Enable Schema Registry 

1. From Lenses Select Schema Registry => Create Connection.

   

2. Within the Confluent Cloud user interface, follow the in-product instructions to launch a Schema Registry. Grab the API endpoint from the Schema Registry.

   

3. In Confluent Cloud select > Schema Registry > Edit API credentials > Create key > Download and continue > Done.

   

4. Back in Lenses, paste the API key in the Nodes, and on the Authentication select Enable basic Auth. Paste the credentials in the Authentication Username (key) and Password (secret) fields as shown below:

   

5. Finally click on Test Schema Registry Connection: You should get a validation message similar to:

Click on Apply Changes.

Limitations 

Confluent Cloud only exposes certain, limited endpoints. These endpoints are not available:

• No Kafka metrics via JMX
• No Kafka Connect endpoint

Without these endpoints these Lenses features are not available: