How can I send large messages with Kafka (over 15MB)?

I send String-messages to Kafka V. 0.8 with the Java Producer API. If the message size is about 15 MB I get a MessageSizeTooLargeException. I have tried to set message.max.bytesto 40 MB, but I still get the exception. Small messages worked without problems.

The exception appears in the producer, I don't have a consumer in this application.

How can I get rid of this exception?

My example producer config

private ProducerConfig kafkaConfig() {
    Properties props = new Properties();
    props.put("metadata.broker.list", BROKERS);
    props.put("serializer.class", "kafka.serializer.StringEncoder");
    props.put("request.required.acks", "1");
    props.put("message.max.bytes", "" + 1024 * 1024 * 40);
    return new ProducerConfig(props);
}

Error-Log:

4709 [main] WARN  kafka.producer.async.DefaultEventHandler  - Produce request with correlation id 214 failed due to [datasift,0]: kafka.common.MessageSizeTooLargeException
4869 [main] WARN  kafka.producer.async.DefaultEventHandler  - Produce request with    correlation id 217 failed due to [datasift,0]: kafka.common.MessageSizeTooLargeException
5035 [main] WARN  kafka.producer.async.DefaultEventHandler  - Produce request with   correlation id 220 failed due to [datasift,0]: kafka.common.MessageSizeTooLargeException
5198 [main] WARN  kafka.producer.async.DefaultEventHandler  - Produce request with correlation id 223 failed due to [datasift,0]: kafka.common.MessageSizeTooLargeException
5305 [main] ERROR kafka.producer.async.DefaultEventHandler  - Failed to send requests for topics datasift with correlation ids in [213,224]

kafka.common.FailedToSendMessageException: Failed to send messages after 3 tries.
at kafka.producer.async.DefaultEventHandler.handle(Unknown Source)
at kafka.producer.Producer.send(Unknown Source)
at kafka.javaapi.producer.Producer.send(Unknown Source)

Solution

You need to adjust three (or four) properties:

Consumer side:fetch.message.max.bytes - this will determine the largest size of a message that can be fetched by the consumer.
Broker side: replica.fetch.max.bytes - this will allow for the replicas in the brokers to send messages within the cluster and make sure the messages are replicated correctly. If this is too small, then the message will never be replicated, and therefore, the consumer will never see the message because the message will never be committed (fully replicated).
Broker side: message.max.bytes - this is the largest size of the message that can be received by the broker from a producer.
Broker side (per topic): max.message.bytes - this is the largest size of the message the broker will allow to be appended to the topic. This size is validated pre-compression. (Defaults to broker's message.max.bytes.)

I found out the hard way about number 2 - you don't get ANY exceptions, messages, or warnings from Kafka, so be sure to consider this when you are sending large messages.