Deploy Standalone Kafka 4 Cruise Control

This page explains how to deploy standalone Cruise Control: extract the binaries, update Kafka metrics settings, edit the configuration files, and start or stop the service.

Steps to deploy

Step 1: Extract the binaries

Download and unpack the Cruise Control distribution:

$ tar -xzf cruise-control4-2.5.146.3.3.6.5-1009.tar.gz $ cd cruise-control

Step 2: Update the Kafka configuration

Enable Cruise Control metrics reporting in Kafka by adding the following details:

metric.reporters=com.linkedin.kafka.cruisecontrol.metricsreporter.CruiseControlMetricsReporter cruise.control.metrics.topic.auto.create=true auto.create.topics.enable=true

Step 3: Configure Cruise Control

All Cruise Control configurations are located under config/:

brokerSets.json capacity.json capacityCores.json capacityJBOD.json clusterConfigs.json cruise_control_jaas.conf_template cruisecontrol.properties log4j.properties

Update these files to reflect your cluster environment.

Note Kafka4 Cruise Control requires Java to run. Ensure that Java 17 is installed by running the following command:
$ java -version
Set JAVA_HOME to point to Java 17. Kafka4 Cruise Control only runs in KRaft mode.

Step 4: Start Cruise Control

Run Cruise Control using the following command:

$ ./kafka-cruise-control-start.sh config/cruisecontrol.properties

Step 5: Stop Cruise Control

Stop the service using the following command:

$ ./kafka-cruise-control-stop.sh

Last updated on Aug 31, 2026

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