Kafka metric.topic creation failure causes NetOps Performance Management OI integration to fail

Products

• Network Observability
• CA Performance Management

Issue/Introduction

Problem

You encounter an initialization failure in the OI Connector when integrating with an external Kafka cluster. The logs show a TopicAuthorizationException because the connector attempts to create a syslog ingestion topic (netops.syslog.event-ingestion) even if you do not intend to use syslog data or have commented out the topic configuration.

Symptoms

The following error appears in the OI Connector logs:

[ERROR] ClusterAdmin - Topic creation failed: org.apache.kafka.common.errors.TopicAuthorizationException: Authorization failed. 
[ERROR] KafkaConfigurationManager - Failed to initialize KafkaConfigurationManager, will retry.
com.ca.im.oinet.connector.kafka.config.ConfigurationException: Topic creation failed for netops.syslog.event-ingestion.

Environment

• DX NetOps Performance Management
• OI Connector
• External Kafka Cluster (Production environments with strict ACLs)

Cause

The OI Connector is hard-coded to attempt the creation of the netops.syslog.event-ingestion topic during initialization.

In environments where the Kafka principal used by the connector lacks "Create" permissions, this causes a fatal initialization loop, preventing other metrics from being processed.

Resolution

Tentative Fix

Engineering is tracking this issue via defect DE209062. This issue is targeted to be fixed in 25.4.11 with an updated OI Connector with the fixed code. Watch the Performance Management Resolved Issues documentation for an entry referencing DE209062 to confirm it's inclusion in 25.4.11.

 

Workaround

Until a formal fix is available, you can use one of the following methods to bypass the initialization error:

1. Grant Kafka ACLs:
   • Temporarily or permanently grant the Kafka ACL topic-create (or Describe and Create) permission on the topic netops.syslog.event-ingestion for the connector's principal.
   • Once the connector successfully creates the topic once, the error stops and data flows normally.
2. Pre-create the Topic:
   • Ask your Kafka administrators to pre-create the topic netops.syslog.event-ingestion manually.
   • Ensure the connector's principal has at least Describe permissions on the pre-created topic.
   • This prevents the connector from attempting a new creation and allows initialization to proceed.

Note: This topic is specific to a legacy syslog integration. No data flows into this topic during standard metric ingestion from NetOps Portal or the Data Aggregator, but the topic must exist for the connector to start.