KIP-1266 — Bounding The Number Of RemoteLogMetadata Messages via Compacted RemoteLogMetadata Topic
Discussion Kafka 4.3 Tiered Storage
Converts the __remote_log_metadata internal topic to a compacted topic so that only the latest event per remote segment key is retained, bounding the topic's size and reducing broker startup time for rebuilding the in-memory RemoteLogMetadataCache. The topic currently grows unbounded as an append-only log of all remote segment lifecycle events, causing slow startup (full topic replay required) and high broker memory usage for clusters with large tiered storage histories.
Details
| Author | Lijun Tong |
| Status | Discussion |
| Kafka Version | 4.3 |
| JIRA | KAFKA-19265 |
| Wiki | View on Apache Wiki |
| Created | 2026-01-05 |
| Last Modified | 2026-03-06 |
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