With 10 consumers and 5 partitions, how many consumers will have partitions assigned?

With 10 consumers and 5 partitions, how many consumers will have partitions assigned?

• A. Ten
• B. Five
• C. All
• D. None

Answer: (B)

Partitions determine how much work can be done in parallel. In a Kafka consumer group, each partition is assigned to exactly one consumer, and a consumer can handle one or more partitions, but every partition must have a single consumer. If there are more consumers than partitions, some members won’t receive any partitions at all. So the number of consumers that actually get partitions is equal to the number of partitions. With this setup, only that subset of the group will have partitions assigned.

Partitions determine how much work can be done in parallel. In a Kafka consumer group, each partition is assigned to exactly one consumer, and a consumer can handle one or more partitions, but every partition must have a single consumer. If there are more consumers than partitions, some members won’t receive any partitions at all. So the number of consumers that actually get partitions is equal to the number of partitions. With this setup, only that subset of the group will have partitions assigned.