The get-bootstrap-brokers cli, which returns only up to 3 broker endpoints.

[insummersnow]

Describe the feature

The get-bootstrap-brokers cli, which returns only up to 3 broker endpoints.

Use Case

The get-bootstrap-brokers CLI returns a maximum of 3 broker endpoints by default.
However, returning all broker endpoints is essential to prevent functional limitations.

Proposed Solution

No response

Other Information

No response

Acknowledgements

• I may be able to implement this feature request
• This feature might incur a breaking change

CLI version used

v2.0.33

Environment details (OS name and version, etc.)

linux

[Madrigal]

Hi,
This seems to be by design, see this comment. The rationale is

Specifically these brokers are a random selection of 3 for "bootstrapping".
The Kafka producer and consumer clients will auto discover other brokers in the cluster by making a getMetadata request to one of the bootstrap brokers. This metadata is periodically updated by the client and also updated in failure cases if a broker goes offline.

The docs now specify this behavior

This list doesn't necessarily include all of the brokers in the cluster.
link

Can you elaborate which use case is blocked for you if you don't have more than 3 ?

[insummersnow]

Sure, thanks for the clarification and the reference to the docs.

I fully understand that Kafka clients are designed to bootstrap with a subset of brokers and discover the full cluster dynamically through metadata requests. However, in our case, we’re not using Kafka clients directly.

Our use case involves external tooling (such as infrastructure monitoring, inventory systems, or query platforms like Steampipe) that interacts only with AWS APIs—not Kafka’s internal protocol. These tools rely solely on the output of GetBootstrapBrokers to retrieve broker endpoints, and they don’t perform Kafka-level metadata discovery.

Returning only 3 broker endpoints limits visibility—we can’t validate full cluster topology, nor can we reliably check network connectivity or compliance across all brokers.

Additionally, the fact that this list is limited to 3 brokers without any explicit indication or option to request the full list may lead to misunderstandings. From a CLI user’s perspective, it’s not immediately clear that the response is intentionally partial and intended only for bootstrapping.

It would be helpful if the API offered an optional flag or mode (e.g., --all-brokers) to return the full list of endpoints. This would make the distinction between bootstrapping usage and full topology inspection explicit, and improve the experience for non-Kafka-client users working at the infrastructure level.