How to run ZooKeeper and Kafka in Docker

There are tons of Docker images out there for Kafka and ZooKeeper. The one I reach for is Bitnami/Kafka — it’s simple and it just works.

Following the official docs, it only takes a few steps. The idea is to create a Docker network that acts as a bridge between the ZooKeeper and Kafka containers.

Step 1 — Create the Docker network

$ docker network create app-tier --driver bridge

This creates a Docker network named app-tier.

Step 2 — Launch the ZooKeeper container

$ docker run -d --name zookeeper --network app-tier -p 2181:2181 -e ALLOW_ANONYMOUS_LOGIN=yes bitnami/zookeeper

This starts a container from bitnami/zookeeper inside the app-tier network, mapping port 2181 to your localhost 2181.

Step 3 — Launch the Kafka container

$ docker run -d --name kafka --network app-tier --hostname localhost -p 9092:9092 -e ALLOW_PLAINTEXT_LISTENER=yes -e KAFKA_CFG_ZOOKEEPER_CONNECT=zookeeper:2181 bitnami/kafka

This starts a container from bitnami/kafka inside the app-tier network, mapping port 9092 to your localhost 9092 and connecting to the ZooKeeper container on the same network.

You can see both containers running in the Docker Dashboard.

Docker Dashboard

To connect to Kafka, just point your app config at localhost:9092.

That’s it! Happy coding :)