Apache Kafka

Producer Request Expiration Indicates Timeout Issues

warning
reliabilityUpdated Mar 2, 2026

When producer requests expire before broker response, it indicates either broker overload, network issues, or producer timeout configuration is too aggressive.

Technologies:
How to detect:

Monitor kafka.producer.request_expiration_rate > 0 or kafka.expires_sec > 0. Cross-reference with kafka.request.produce_time_99p to determine if broker is slow or timeout is too short.

Recommended action:

1. Check broker latency: If kafka.request.produce_time_99p is high, broker is slow. 2. Increase request.timeout.ms: Give broker more time to respond if latency is legitimately high. 3. Check network: Verify network latency and packet loss between producer and broker. 4. Review broker load: Scale broker capacity if overloaded. 5. Check producer retries: Ensure delivery.timeout.ms is set appropriately high. 6. Monitor metadata refresh: Frequent metadata updates can cause transient timeouts.