Skip to content
Kafka Is FunProgress

Beginner5 min

Producer acks Comparison (0 vs 1 vs all)

Understand the durability and latency trade-offs between different acks settings.

The acks parameter is arguably the most important producer configuration. It controls the trade-off between write throughput, latency, and durability. Each setting has specific failure scenarios.

The steps below reference the interactive simulator, which is being migrated into /simulate next — until it lands, treat this as the written runbook for the exercise.

Steps

0 of 5 steps completed

Verification

You understand the durability spectrum: acks=0 (may lose), acks=1 (may lose on leader crash), acks=all (never lose if ISR healthy).

The interview angle

Production recommendation: acks=all + enable.idempotence=true for critical data. acks=1 for telemetry/metrics where occasional loss is acceptable.