This short article explains how to resolve the error: ERROR Fatal error during KafkaServer startup. Prepare to shutdown (kafka.server.KafkaServer)kafka.common.InconsistentClusterIdException when we start the Apache Kafka installed and configured on a multi-node cluster. You can read the steps for setting up a multi-node Apache Kafka cluster here.
Without integrating Apache Zookeeper, Kafka alone won’t be able to form the complete Kafka cluster. Because ZooKeeper handles the leadership election of Kafka brokers and manages service discovery as well as cluster topology. It also tracks when topics are created or deleted from the cluster and maintains a topic list. Overall, ZooKeeper provides an in-sync view of the Kafka cluster.