./bin/zookeeper-server-start.sh config/zookeeper.propertiesBroker Nodes — Kafka Servers
| Note | A Kafka server, a Kafka broker and a Kafka node all refer to the same concept and are synonyms (see the scaladoc of KafkaServer). | 
A Kafka broker is modelled as KafkaServer that hosts topics.
| Note | Given topics are always partitioned across brokers in a cluster a single broker hosts topic partitions of one or more topics actually (even when a topic is only partitioned to just a single partition). | 
Quoting Broker article (from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia):
A broker is an individual person who arranges transactions between a buyer and a seller for a commission when the deal is executed.
A broker’s prime responsibility is to bring sellers and buyers together and thus a broker is the third-person facilitator between a buyer and a seller.
A Kafka broker receives messages from producers and stores them on disk keyed by unique offset.
A Kafka broker allows consumers to fetch messages by topic, partition and offset.
Kafka brokers can create a Kafka cluster by sharing information between each other directly or indirectly using Zookeeper.
A Kafka cluster has exactly one broker that acts as the Controller.
You can start a single Kafka broker using kafka-server-start.sh script.
Starting Kafka Broker
Start Zookeeper.
Only when Zookeeper is up and running you can start a Kafka server (that will connect to Zookeeper).
./bin/kafka-server-start.sh config/server.properties| Tip | Read kafka-server-start.sh script. | 
 kafka-server-start.sh script
kafka-server-start.sh starts a Kafka broker.
$ ./bin/kafka-server-start.sh
USAGE: ./bin/kafka-server-start.sh [-daemon] server.properties [--override property=value]*| Note | Before you run kafka-server-start.shmake sure that Zookeeper is up and running. Usezookeeper-server-startshell script. | 
kafka-server-start.sh uses config/log4j.properties for logging configuration that you can override using KAFKA_LOG4J_OPTS environment variable.
KAFKA_LOG4J_OPTS="-Dlog4j.configuration=file:config/log4j.properties"kafka-server-start.sh accepts KAFKA_HEAP_OPTS and EXTRA_ARGS environment variables.
Command-line options:
- 
-name— defaults tokafkaServerwhen in daemon mode.
- 
-loggc— enabled when in daemon mode.
- 
-daemon— enables daemon mode.
- 
--override property=value—valuethat should override the value set forpropertyinserver.propertiesfile.
$ ./bin/kafka-server-start.sh config/server.properties --override broker.id=100
...
INFO [KafkaServer id=100] started (kafka.server.KafkaServer)