A company runs a dozen event-driven applications on Apache Kafka in its own data center and wants them on Google Cloud as a managed service. Teams want to keep their existing Kafka client libraries, topic configuration and consumer groups, with the smallest possible code change. Which service fits?
Show answer and explanation
Answer: C
Google Cloud Managed Service for Apache Kafka runs Kafka clusters as a managed service and exposes the standard Kafka protocol. Existing clients, topics and consumer groups can connect with configuration changes rather than code rewrites, which keeps migration risk low and lets teams move applications one at a time. Rewriting every producer and consumer is costly and introduces new bugs. Cloud Tasks dispatches individual tasks to HTTP targets rather than hosting topics, and Cloud Scheduler triggers jobs on a schedule instead of delivering event streams.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Rewriting applications against another messaging API means every producer and consumer changes, along with its error handling and offset logic. That is the opposite of the minimal-change goal.
- B. Cloud Tasks dispatches individual tasks to HTTP targets with retry controls. It does not provide Kafka topics, partitions or consumer groups, so existing Kafka clients cannot use it.
- D. Cloud Scheduler runs cron-style jobs at set times and does not carry event streams. Polling sources on a timer adds latency and loses the ordering and replay that Kafka provides.