I'm writing a Flink application on Kubernetes which reads and writes to Kafka, so I need a Kafka cluster for testing purposes. I just want to find the easiest way to have a Kafka cluster running in Kubernetes, it could be just a single node cluster, performance is not a concern.
You can definitely check https://strimzi.io/ , it is a Kubernetes Kafka Operator
check this out: https://strimzi.io/quickstarts/minikube/
I think the best option is to use Helm to deploy and use charts already tested and supported by big companies and the community.
I can highlight two of them:
1 - confluentinc/cp-helm-charts
The Confluent Platform Helm charts enable you to deploy Confluent Platform services on Kubernetes for development, test, and proof of concept environments.
Although this chart is in developer preview (not supported for production use), the Kafka stack is pretty stable, well documented and supported by the Confluent Operator. By default, some commercially licensed components are used, so make sure to tweak the settings to use the community licensed ones.
2 - bitnami/kafka
This chart bootstraps a Kafka deployment on a Kubernetes cluster using the Helm package manager.
Bitnami charts can be used with Kubeapps for deployment and management of Helm Charts in clusters. This Helm chart has been tested on top of Bitnami Kubernetes Production Runtime (BKPR). Deploy BKPR to get automated TLS certificates, logging and monitoring for your applications.