Spectrum (netops.spectrum.alarm) Kafka topic is showing null prints

Products

• Network Observability
• Spectrum

Issue/Introduction

Spectrum (netops.spectrum.alarm) Kafka topic is showing null prints

./kafka-console-consumer.sh --bootstrap-server <kafka-server>:<port> --topic netops.spectrum.alarm --from-beginning --property print.key=true --property print.value=true --property print.timestamp=true

Environment

Spectrum 24.3.x 

Cause

Working as designed

Resolution

When an alarm is deleted from Spectrum, we send a tombstone record to the netops.spectrum.alarm topic which is recorded as null

A Kafka tombstone record is a message produced to a Kafka topic with a non-null key and a null value. It serves as a marker for the deletion of the record associated with that key.