Kafka

Give an agent access to Kafka through the ilert MCP connector you deploy in your own network.

Required permissions

Tool	Required Permission	Description
list_topics	read	List all Kafka topics in the cluster. Useful for discovering available topics and their configurations.
describe_topic	read	Get detailed information about a specific topic including partitions, replication factor, and configuration settings.
list_consumers	read	List all consumer groups in the cluster. Useful for monitoring consumer lag and group status.
describe_consumer	read	Get detailed information about a consumer group including member assignments, lag, and current offsets.
get_consumer_lag	read	Get consumer lag information for a specific consumer group and topic. Helps identify if consumers are falling behind.

Deploy the ilert MCP connector

ilert does not talk to your brokers directly. The Kafka MCP server calls the ilert MCP connector, a service you deploy in your own network and expose over a public HTTPS URL. Deployment, the auth token and all configuration options are on its own page:

ilert MCP connector

Enable Kafka on the connector with these variables:

KAFKA_ENABLED=true
KAFKA_BROKERS=kafka1:9092,kafka2:9092
KAFKA_AUTH_TYPE=PLAIN          # or NONE, SCRAM-SHA-256, SCRAM-SHA-512, SSL, SASL_SSL
KAFKA_USERNAME=your_username
KAFKA_PASSWORD=your_password

Use KAFKA_AUTH_TYPE=NONE if your cluster requires no authentication, and see the connector page for the TLS variables the SSL and SASL_SSL types need.

Connect Kafka with agent

To connect Kafka with your AI SRE agent:

1

Navigate to Agents in the ilert navigation menu

2

Open the agent detail view for the agent you want to configure

3

Go to the Tools tab

4

Under the ilert hosted MCP servers section, locate the Kafka card

5

Click Connect on the Kafka card

6

In the connection dialog that appears:

• Select connector: Choose "Create new connector" (or select an existing connector if you have one)
• Type: Select Bearer Token from the dropdown
• Secret name: Enter a name for your connector (e.g., "Kafka Production" or "Kafka Main")
• Secret value: Enter the AUTH_TOKEN value from your connector deployment
• Host URL: Enter the public URL where your connector is reachable (e.g., https://ilert-mcp-connector.example.com)

7

Click Connect to complete the connection

8

After connecting, you can enable or disable specific tools needed for alert investigation, such as:

• list_topics - List all Kafka topics in the cluster
• describe_topic - Get detailed information about a specific topic
• list_consumers - List all consumer groups in the cluster
• describe_consumer - Get detailed information about a consumer group
• get_consumer_lag - Get consumer lag information for monitoring

The Kafka integration is now connected and ready to use for root cause analysis.