Is there really no way to set "controller.socket.timeout.ms kafka" config with strimzi?

[tobias-gaenzler-rd]

According to the documentation kafka configs with prefix "controller.*" will be ignored by strimzi (source code).

We want to reduce the config "controller.socket.timeout.ms" to 5 seconds in order to speed up recovery in case of failure e.g. a very long garbage collection which freezes one node.
Is there an option with strimzi to change this config or are there other recommendations (e.g. custom liveness probe)?

[scholzj]

I think you can open an enhancement issue to get it whitelisted if you want. It does not seem like a major issue to have this option allowed.

[scholzj]

(That said, I have no idea if it really helps with what you suggest ... just commenting on the configurability. On a first guess, it would be an option which can also have a major negative impact, so not sure I would touch it.)

[tobias-gaenzler-rd]

Thanks for the quick reply! What kind of negative impact would be possible when reducing this config?

[scholzj]

Well, I do not want to pretend to be an expert on this. But I would expect that decreasing the timeouts can improve some recovery in one case, but also lead to quorum instabilities in other cases. It is of course hard to say where exactly would be the limit where things might start having some undesired effects.

That said, I do not think that is necessarily a blocker for making this configurable. If we make it configurable and you screw it up, it will be your cluster which breaks. And obviously, without it being configurable, it is also hard for you to test what impact do different values have. So as I said, feel free to open an enhancement issue and it can go through the triage etc. I would not expect there to be any major voices against making this configurable.