:_mod-docs-content-type: CONCEPT

// Module included in the following assemblies:
//
// assembly-securing-kafka-clients.adoc

[id='con-configuring-client-quotas-{context}']
= Configuring user quotas

[role="_abstract"]
Configure the `spec` for the `KafkaUser` resource to enforce quotas so that a user does not overload Kafka brokers.
Set size-based network usage and time-based CPU utilization thresholds.

Partition mutations occur in response to the following types of user requests:

* Creating partitions for a new topic
* Adding partitions to an existing topic
* Deleting partitions from a topic

You can also add a partition mutation quota to control the rate at which requests to change partitions are accepted.

.Example `KafkaUser` with user quotas
[source,yaml,subs="attributes+"]
----
apiVersion: {KafkaUserApiVersion}
kind: KafkaUser
metadata:
  name: my-user
  labels:
    strimzi.io/cluster: my-cluster
spec:
  # ...
  quotas:
    producerByteRate: 1048576 # <1>
    consumerByteRate: 2097152 # <2>
    requestPercentage: 55 # <3>
    controllerMutationRate: 10 # <4>
----
<1> Byte-per-second quota on the amount of data the user can push to a Kafka broker.
<2> Byte-per-second quota on the amount of data the user can fetch from a Kafka broker.
<3> CPU utilization limit as a percentage of time for a client group.
<4> Number of concurrent partition creation and deletion operations (mutations) allowed per second.

Using quotas for Kafka clients might be useful in a number of situations.
Consider a wrongly configured Kafka producer which is sending requests at too high a rate.
Such misconfiguration can cause a denial of service to other clients, so the problematic client ought to be blocked.
By using a network limiting quota, it is possible to prevent this situation from significantly impacting other clients.

NOTE: Strimzi supports user-level quotas, but not client-level quotas.