Kafka Error TELEMETRY_TOO_LARGE
Error code 118 · Non-retriable Telemetry
Client sent a push telemetry request larger than the maximum size the broker will accept.
Common Causes
- Client is pushing a telemetry payload that exceeds the broker's configured maximum size (`telemetry.max.bytes`, default varies). This happens when many metrics are enabled or metric cardinality is very high.
- Client-side metric selector is too broad — subscribing to all available metrics rather than a curated subset leads to large payloads, especially on high-throughput producers/consumers.
- Metric data accumulation: the client buffered too many telemetry data points between push intervals (long interval + high metric activity), resulting in a large batch payload.
Solutions
- Reduce the set of metrics collected: use `GetTelemetrySubscriptions` to understand what the broker requests, and configure the client to push only essential metrics. Filter using metric prefix selectors if supported by the client library.
- Increase the push frequency or shrink the batch size so smaller incremental payloads are sent rather than large batches; in managed clients, honor the interval and max-bytes limits returned by GetTelemetrySubscriptions.
- Increase `telemetry.max.bytes` on the broker side if the payload size is legitimate and within acceptable memory budget. Check broker docs for the config key and adjust accordingly.
Diagnostic Commands
# Check broker telemetry configuration
kafka-configs.sh --bootstrap-server localhost:9092 --entity-type brokers --entity-default --describe | grep -i telemetry
# Look for telemetry events in logs
grep 'TELEMETRY_TOO_LARGE\|telemetry\|PushTelemetry' /var/log/kafka/server.log | tail -30Related APIs
This error can be returned by: PushTelemetry
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