Automate Kafka Governance with Terraform and Conduktor

Terraform automates resource provisioning through infrastructure-as-code. With 4,000+ integrations, 250+ partners, and a large contributor community, it's the dominant IaC platform.

Teams adopted Terraform to standardize infrastructure across clouds. Instead of learning different toolsets or writing step-by-step scripts, they declare the desired end state. Terraform handles the rest.

Kafka Lacks Built-in Governance

Apache Kafka is powerful but ships without enterprise governance and security features. Large deployments require manual work, custom scripts, and sprawling configs. The problem multiplies when Kafka spans multiple departments and teams.

A single administrator managing hundreds of topics across clusters becomes a bottleneck. Onboarding new resources slows to a crawl. Developer productivity tanks.

The solution: integrate Conduktor into Terraform pipelines. Teams enforce security policies, implement access controls, and enable self-service through Conduktor while Terraform handles automation and templatization.

This approach also means platform engineers don't need to learn a new infrastructure tool. They get standardized guidelines across all Kafka clusters, regardless of cloud or owner.

Self-Service Without Chaos

Platform teams face a real tension: empower developers to move fast without sacrificing governance or consistency.

Pairing Terraform with Conduktor lets teams codify policies, define access controls, and templatize user provisioning. Configuration drift disappears. Every change gets logged for review, rollback, or audit.

Platform teams codify preset guardrails for security and access. Developers onboard themselves, provision resources, and ship faster. No tickets. No manual approvals.

Platform teams become enablers instead of gatekeepers.

A Retailer's Terraform Implementation

With the Conduktor provider, platform teams codify resources (access policies, roles, clusters, interceptors) and enforce state across their entire Kafka environment. This brings predictability to operations and automates onboarding, monitoring, and provisioning.

One major retailer's platform team was drowning in requests. Without Conduktor, they relied on ticket-based workflows and custom scripts for every ACL, topic, and group assignment.

Kafka usage grew to nearly 300 users. The approach collapsed. Long wait times, complicated workflows, monitoring headaches. Developers got blocked by unclear procedures. Platform teams struggled with consistency across environments.

The Conduktor Terraform provider changed this. The retailer now standardizes security across clusters, including encrypted data sharing with external partners. Platform teams define roles, groups, and policies. Users access only authorized data.

resource "conduktor_console_group_v2" "project-group" {

  name = "project-group"

  spec = {

    display_name = "project-group"

    members = [conduktor_console_user_v2.user1.name]

    permissions = [

      {

        permissions = ["userView", "datamaskingView", "auditLogView"]

        resource_type = "TOPIC"

        permissions = ["topicViewConfig", "topicConsume", "topicProduce"]

      }

    ]

  }

}

The platform team stopped gatekeeping minor operations. Application teams now act autonomously within defined parameters.

Start Using the Conduktor Terraform Provider

Large Kafka deployments create overhead for developers and administrators. Manual management introduces security vulnerabilities and policy inconsistencies.

The Conduktor Terraform provider enforces security and governance across distributed Kafka environments. Platform teams predefine permissions and automate configurations. Developers provision their own resources without risking infrastructure stability.

Get started with the Conduktor Terraform documentation.