Create an Inkless Kafka service

Create an Inkless Apache Kafka® service on Aiven Cloud or using Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC).

Prerequisites

• Access to the Aiven Console
• An Aiven project where you can create Kafka services

Create an Inkless service on Aiven Cloud

Inkless services are available on the Professional tier. On Aiven Cloud, configure the service by selecting stream load and retention. Inkless runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure.

Console

1. In the Aiven Console, open the project and select Services.
2. Click Create service.
3. Select Apache Kafka®.
4. In Service tier, select Professional.
5. In Cluster type, select Inkless.
6. In Deployment mode, select Aiven cloud.
7. Under Cloud, select AWS, Google, or Azure, then choose a region.
8. In Stream load, select the expected traffic for the service. For custom stream load, set the maximum ingress and egress.
9. Optional: Enable Diskless topics if the option is shown. You can enable diskless topics later in Service settings > Advanced configuration.
10. Select a Retention period.
11. In Service basics, enter:
    • Name: Enter a name for the service. You cannot change the service name after creation.
    • Tags: Optional. Add resource tags to organize your services.
12. Review the cost estimate in the Service summary panel, then click Create service.

CLI

Create an Inkless Kafka service on Aiven Cloud using the Aiven CLI.

1. List available Inkless offerings for the project:

   avn inkless offering list \
     --organization-id ORGANIZATION_ID \
     --project PROJECT_NAME

   The command returns available offerings with their maximum ingress and egress throughput.

2. Optional: Filter offerings by required ingress throughput:

   avn inkless offering list \
     --organization-id ORGANIZATION_ID \
     --project PROJECT_NAME \
     --ingress REQUIRED_MBPS

3. View pricing rates for the offerings:

   avn inkless offering rates \
     --organization-id ORGANIZATION_ID \
     --project PROJECT_NAME \
     --cloud-provider CLOUD_PROVIDER

   Optional: Filter rates by offering with --offering-name OFFERING_NAME or by region with --cloud-name CLOUD_NAME.

4. Create the Inkless Kafka service using an offering as the plan:

   avn service create SERVICE_NAME \
     --project PROJECT_NAME \
     --service-type kafka \
     --cloud CLOUD_REGION \
     --plan OFFERING_NAME \
     -c kafka_version=4.1 \
     -c tiered_storage.enabled=true \
     -c inkless.enabled=true

Parameters:

• ORGANIZATION_ID: Organization ID that owns the project.
• PROJECT_NAME: Aiven project name.
• REQUIRED_MBPS: Minimum ingress throughput in megabits per second. Use with --ingress to list only offerings that meet this requirement.
• CLOUD_PROVIDER: Cloud provider for rate listings: aws, google (Google Cloud), or azure.
• CLOUD_NAME: Cloud or region identifier for filtering rate output. Use with --cloud-name on avn inkless offering rates (for example, a value shown in the rates listing for your provider).
• CLOUD_REGION: Cloud region for the service, such as aws-us-east-1.
• OFFERING_NAME: Inkless offering returned by avn inkless offering list.
• SERVICE_NAME: Name of the Kafka service.

Optional: To enable diskless topics when creating the service, run avn service create with kafka_diskless.enabled set to true (in addition to the options in the previous step):

-c kafka_diskless.enabled=true

You can also enable diskless topics later in the service configuration.

Review the cost estimate

Before you create an Inkless Kafka service, review the estimated monthly cost in the Service summary panel.

The estimate is based on your selected plan, cloud and region, expected traffic, and retention.

For Inkless Kafka services with network pricing, the estimate includes compute, storage, and network usage. Network usage is estimated from expected data produced to and consumed from Kafka topics.

For more information, see Network pricing for Aiven for Apache Kafka®.

note

The estimated monthly cost is based on your selected configuration and 730 hours of usage per month. Your final cost depends on actual usage during the billing period.

After you create a service with usage-based pricing, view usage in Overview > Service utilization.

Create an Inkless service on Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC)

You can run Inkless Kafka clusters in your own cloud account using Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC). Inkless on BYOC supports classic topics and diskless topics.

Before creating services on BYOC, configure a BYOC environment. For instructions, see Create a custom cloud (BYOC).

Console

1. In the Aiven Console, open the project and select Services.
2. Click Create service.
3. Select Apache Kafka®.
4. In Service tier, select Professional.
5. In Cluster type, select Inkless.
6. In Deployment mode, select Bring your own cloud (BYOC).
7. In Cloud, select your BYOC environment and region.
8. Select a plan.
9. In Service basics, enter:
   • Name: Enter a name for the service. You cannot change the name after creation.
   • Tags: Optional. Add resource tags to organize your services.
10. Review the Service summary, and click Create service.

CLI

Create an Inkless Kafka service in a BYOC environment:

1. List available Kafka plans for your BYOC cloud and region, and select a plan that supports Inkless services.

   avn service plans --service-type kafka --cloud CUSTOM_CLOUD_REGION

2. Create the service using an Inkless-capable plan:

   avn service create SERVICE_NAME \
     --project PROJECT_NAME \
     --service-type kafka \
     --cloud CUSTOM_CLOUD_REGION \
     --plan INKLESS_PLAN \
     -c kafka_version=4.1 \
     -c tiered_storage.enabled=true

   Set tiered_storage.enabled=true for Inkless on BYOC. Diskless topics are optional, same as in the Console flow. You can use classic topics until you enable diskless.

3. Optional: To enable diskless topics when creating the service, use the following command. It matches the previous step with -c kafka_diskless.enabled=true added:

   avn service create SERVICE_NAME \
     --project PROJECT_NAME \
     --service-type kafka \
     --cloud CUSTOM_CLOUD_REGION \
     --plan INKLESS_PLAN \
     -c kafka_version=4.1 \
     -c tiered_storage.enabled=true \
     -c kafka_diskless.enabled=true

   You can also enable diskless topics later in the service configuration.

Parameters:

• SERVICE_NAME: Name of the Kafka service.
• PROJECT_NAME: Aiven project name.
• CUSTOM_CLOUD_REGION: BYOC region, such as custom-aws-eu-central-1.
• INKLESS_PLAN: Inkless-capable plan for the selected BYOC environment.

After creating the service, create topics to store data streams. To create topics, see Create Kafka topics.

Related pages

• Create a Kafka topic
• Diskless topics overview
• Generate sample data