This topic describes the instance editions for Message Queue for Apache Kafka. You can use this information to select an edition that best suits your business requirements.
Instance types
single-zone: Your service and data are deployed in a single availability zone. If a zone-level failure occurs, your service becomes unavailable and you risk data loss. If you select a single-zone instance, we recommend creating an instance in a different region and use a connector to back up messages. For more information, see Best practices for single-zone disaster recovery.
multi-zone: Your service and data are deployed across multiple availability zones. This architecture protects against service outages and data loss if a single availability zone fails. We recommend multi-zone deployment for mission-critical services.
The following table describes the instance editions for Message Queue for Apache Kafka.
Item | Standard edition (High-write) | Professional edition (High-write) | Professional edition (High-read) | Serverless basic edition | Serverless standard edition | Serverless professional edition |
Storage cost | Reserved capacity. Costs are comparable to a self-managed cluster. For example, if you purchase a 300 GB disk, 100 GB is available for your business data and the remaining 200 GB is reserved for replicas. | Reserved capacity, saving up to 66% compared to a self-managed cluster. For example, if you purchase a 300 GB disk, all 300 GB is available for your business data. An additional 600 GB of storage for replicas is included free of charge. | pay-as-you-go model. You are billed for the actual storage space that you use and the retention duration. This saves over 70% in storage costs compared to using cloud disks for a self-managed cluster. | |||
Compute cost | Reserved capacity | Reserved capacity | pay-as-you-go model | |||
Service interruption | Quickly scales to handle sudden traffic spikes without lengthy data rebalancing. | |||||
Elastic architecture | After a scale-out, new read and write operations are accommodated within seconds. | The decoupled storage and compute architecture enables reads, writes, and partition migrations to complete within seconds. | ||||
Seamless vertical scaling | Not supported | Not supported | Not supported | Requires manual scaling. |
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Peak read/write traffic ratio | 1:1 | 1:1 | 3:1 | 3:1 | ||
Deployment architecture | shared instance (logical isolation) | dedicated instance (exclusive physical cluster) | shared instance (logical isolation) | dedicated instance (exclusive physical cluster) | ||
Topic TTL | Not supported | Supported for local storage | Fully supported | |||
Message retention period | Up to 7 days | Customizable based on your use case. | Supports unlimited retention, with a default limit of one year. To request a longer retention period, submit a ticket. | |||
Disaster recovery | Compute and storage nodes are deployed in a single availability zone. | Supports multi-zone deployment. If you select single-zone deployment, both compute and storage nodes are deployed in a single availability zone. | Compute and storage nodes are deployed in a single availability zone. | Multi-zone deployment across three availability zones (3AZ). | ||
Performance tuning | Not supported | Customizable based on your use case. | Customizable based on your use case. | |||
ACL | Not supported | Supported | Supported | |||
SSL encryption for message transmission in VPCs | Not supported | Supported | Supported | |||
Cross-zone deployment | Not supported | Supported | Not supported | Supported | ||
Client version compatibility | Compatible with Apache Kafka clients version 0.11 to 3.x. | Compatible with Apache Kafka clients version 0.11 to 3.x. | Compatible with Apache Kafka clients version 0.11 to 3.x. | |||
Service level agreement (SLA) | 99.95% | Provides an SLA of 99.99% for multi-zone deployments and 99.95% for single-zone deployments. | Provides a 99.9% SLA, which is lower than the Standard and Professional editions. This edition uses a larger proportion of low-cost resources, such as HDDs, OSS, and spot instances. Recommended for testing or workloads with stable traffic. For mission-critical workloads that require high stability, we recommend the Serverless Standard or Professional Edition. | Provides a 99.95% SLA. Recommended for production environments. | Provides a 99.99% SLA with disaster recovery across three availability zones. Offers greater elasticity for instances with lower reserved throughput. This is the recommended enterprise-grade edition. | |
Cloud disk encryption | Supported | Supported | Not supported | |||
Traffic specifications and throttling
The traffic specification of a Message Queue for Apache Kafka instance defines the maximum throughput for message production (write) and consumption (read). Understanding how traffic limits are calculated and how throttling is triggered can help you diagnose performance issues.
Per-node traffic distribution — The traffic specification limit is distributed evenly across the broker nodes in an instance. For example, in a 3-node instance, the traffic limit for each node is approximately one-third of the total specification. If a single node's actual traffic exceeds its per-node limit, throttling is triggered for that node — even if the overall instance traffic has not reached the specification limit.
Traffic skew and throttling — By default, Apache Kafka replicates messages across 3 replicas. If message production is uneven — for example, due to scheduled batch sends or uneven partition key distribution — traffic concentrates on specific nodes or partitions. This causes local overload and triggers throttling even when the instance-level average traffic appears to be within the specification.
View traffic specifications — In the console, go to the instance list and click the instance name. On the Instance Information tab, the Basic Information section displays the Traffic Specification of your instance, including the Maximum Read Traffic and Maximum Write Traffic values in MB/s.
Monitor traffic usage — To identify single-node throttling or traffic skew, go to Prometheus Monitoring in the left-side navigation pane of the instance details page. View the Node consumption traffic and Cluster consumption traffic metrics to compare actual per-node traffic against the per-node limit (total specification ÷ number of nodes).
Instance partitions
The number of partitions varies by instance edition as described in the following tables.
Serverless instances
Edition | Partition replicas | Maximum partition replicas |
Basic Edition |
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To request a higher limit, submit a ticket. |
Standard Edition | ||
Professional Edition |
Subscription and pay-as-you-go instances
Standard edition (High-write)
Traffic specification | Included partitions | Maximum partitions |
alikafka.hw.2xlarge | 1,000 | 4,000 |
alikafka.hw.3xlarge | 1,000 | 4,200 |
alikafka.hw.6xlarge | 1,000 | 4,400 |
alikafka.hw.9xlarge | 1,000 | 4,600 |
alikafka.hw.12xlarge | 1,000 | 4,800 |
Professional edition (High-write)
Traffic specification | Included partitions | Maximum partitions |
alikafka.hw.2xlarge | 1,000 | 4,000 |
alikafka.hw.3xlarge | 1,000 | 4,200 |
alikafka.hw.6xlarge | 1,000 | 4,400 |
alikafka.hw.9xlarge | 1,000 | 4,600 |
alikafka.hw.12xlarge | 1,000 | 4,800 |
alikafka.hw.16xlarge | 2,000 | 5,000 |
alikafka.hw.20xlarge | 2,000 | 6,000 |
alikafka.hw.25xlarge | 2,000 | 7,000 |
alikafka.hw.30xlarge | 2,000 | 8,000 |
alikafka.hw.60xlarge | 2,000 | 9,000 |
alikafka.hw.80xlarge | 2,000 | 10,000 |
alikafka.hw.100xlarge | 3,000 | 12,000 |
alikafka.hw.120xlarge | 3,000 | 14,000 |
alikafka.hw.150xlarge | 3,000 | 16,000 |
alikafka.hw.180xlarge | 3,000 | 18,000 |
alikafka.hw.200xlarge | 3,000 | 20,000 |
alikafka.hw2.220xlarge | 4,000 | 24,000 |
alikafka.hw2.300xlarge | 4,000 | 26,000 |
alikafka.hw2.400xlarge | 4,000 | 28,000 |
alikafka.hw2.500xlarge | 4,000 | 30,000 |
alikafka.hw2.600xlarge | 5,000 | 32,000 |
alikafka.hw2.700xlarge | 5,000 | 34,000 |
alikafka.hw2.800xlarge | 5,000 | 36,000 |
alikafka.hw2.900xlarge | 5,000 | 38,000 |
alikafka.hw2.1000xlarge | 5,000 | 40,000 |
Professional edition (High-read)
Traffic specification | Included partitions | Maximum partitions |
alikafka.hr.2xlarge | 1,000 | 4,000 |
alikafka.hr.3xlarge | 1,000 | 4,200 |
alikafka.hr.6xlarge | 1,000 | 4,400 |
alikafka.hr.9xlarge | 1,000 | 4,600 |
alikafka.hr.12xlarge | 1,000 | 4,800 |
alikafka.hr.16xlarge | 2,000 | 5,000 |
alikafka.hr.20xlarge | 2,000 | 6,000 |
alikafka.hr.25xlarge | 2,000 | 7,000 |
alikafka.hr.30xlarge | 2,000 | 8,000 |
alikafka.hr.60xlarge | 2,000 | 9,000 |
alikafka.hr.80xlarge | 2,000 | 10,000 |
alikafka.hr.100xlarge | 3,000 | 12,000 |
alikafka.hr.120xlarge | 3,000 | 14,000 |
alikafka.hr.150xlarge | 3,000 | 16,000 |
alikafka.hr.180xlarge | 3,000 | 18,000 |
alikafka.hr.200xlarge | 3,000 | 20,000 |
alikafka.hr2.220xlarge | 4,000 | 24,000 |
alikafka.hr2.300xlarge | 4,000 | 26,000 |
alikafka.hr2.400xlarge | 4,000 | 28,000 |
alikafka.hr2.500xlarge | 4,000 | 30,000 |
alikafka.hr2.600xlarge | 5,000 | 32,000 |
alikafka.hr2.700xlarge | 5,000 | 34,000 |
alikafka.hr2.800xlarge | 5,000 | 36,000 |
alikafka.hr2.900xlarge | 5,000 | 38,000 |
alikafka.hr2.1000xlarge | 5,000 | 40,000 |
FAQ
What are the instance edition requirements for integrating Kafka with the MQTT Rule Engine?
There are no mandatory edition requirements for using Message Queue for Apache Kafka with the MQTT Rule Engine. Any edition — Standard, Professional, or Serverless — supports basic integration.
However, if your production environment requires SASL authentication or ACL-based access control, you must use the Professional Edition or Serverless Edition. The Standard Edition does not support SASL endpoints or ACL.