title: Kafka topics with different retention although having the same configuration
body: <p>I have a question regarding retention of topics messages.</p>
  <p>I have the following situation:</p>
  <ul>
  <li>Two Kafka topics;</li>
  <li>Broker has properties <code>log.retention.hours=1</code>;</li>
  </ul>
  <p>Describe command for each of the two topics:</p>
  <pre><code>[oracleas@zkafka01vdc bin]$ ./kafka-topics.sh --zookeeper 192.168.163.71:2181 --describe --topic digital-lending
  Topic:digital-lending   PartitionCount:3        ReplicationFactor:2     Configs:
          Topic: digital-lending  Partition: 0    Leader: 3       Replicas: 1,3   Isr: 3,1
          Topic: digital-lending  Partition: 1    Leader: 2       Replicas: 2,1   Isr: 1,2
          Topic: digital-lending  Partition: 2    Leader: 3       Replicas: 3,2   Isr: 3,2
  
  [oracleas@zkafka01vdc bin]$ ./kafka-topics.sh --zookeeper 192.168.163.71:2181 --describe --topic digital-onboarding
  Topic:digital-onboarding        PartitionCount:1        ReplicationFactor:1     Configs:
          Topic: digital-onboarding       Partition: 0    Leader: 1       Replicas: 1     Isr: 1
  </code></pre>
  <p><strong>The question are:</strong></p>
  <ol>
  <li><p>How is possible that topic digital-onboarding have retention 1 day and digital-lending 1 week (based on my observation - tried several times to take all the messages from queue and for one topics the retention was 1 day and for the other one was 1 week)?</p>
  </li>
  <li><p>Is there another place where it is setuped besides the <code>--describe</code> command and server.properties file?</p>
  </li>
  </ol>
  <p>Edit 1:</p>
  <p>server.properties file:</p>
  <pre><code># Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
  # contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
  # this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
  # The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
  # (the &quot;License&quot;); you may not use this file except in compliance with
  # the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
  #
  #    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
  #
  # Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
  # distributed under the License is distributed on an &quot;AS IS&quot; BASIS,
  # WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
  # See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
  # limitations under the License.
  
  # see kafka.server.KafkaConfig for additional details and defaults
  
  ############################# Server Basics #############################
  
  # The id of the broker. This must be set to a unique integer for each broker.
  broker.id=1
  
  # Switch to enable topic deletion or not, default value is false
  delete.topic.enable=true
  
  ############################# Socket Server Settings #############################
  
  # The address the socket server listens on. It will get the value returned from
  # java.net.InetAddress.getCanonicalHostName() if not configured.
  #   FORMAT:
  #     listeners = listener_name://host_name:port
  #   EXAMPLE:
  #     listeners = PLAINTEXT://your.host.name:9092
  #listeners=PLAINTEXT://10.206.23.71:9092
  listeners=EXTERNAL://zkafka01vdc-pub:9092,INTERNAL://zkafka01vdc-int:9093
  
  # Hostname and port the broker will advertise to producers and consumers. If not set,
  # it uses the value for &quot;listeners&quot; if configured.  Otherwise, it will use the value
  # returned from java.net.InetAddress.getCanonicalHostName().
  #advertised.listeners=PLAINTEXT://zkafka01vdc.bcr.wan:9092
  advertised.listeners=EXTERNAL://zkafka01vdc.bcr.wan:9092,INTERNAL://zkafka01vdc-int:9093
  
  # Maps listener names to security protocols, the default is for them to be the same. See the config documentation for more details
  #listener.security.protocol.map=PLAINTEXT:PLAINTEXT,SSL:SSL,SASL_PLAINTEXT:SASL_PLAINTEXT,SASL_SSL:SASL_SSL
  listener.security.protocol.map=EXTERNAL:PLAINTEXT,INTERNAL:PLAINTEXT
  
  inter.broker.listener.name=INTERNAL
  
  # The number of threads that the server uses for receiving requests from the network and sending responses to the network
  num.network.threads=3
  
  # The number of threads that the server uses for processing requests, which may include disk I/O
  num.io.threads=8
  
  # The send buffer (SO_SNDBUF) used by the socket server
  socket.send.buffer.bytes=102400
  
  # The receive buffer (SO_RCVBUF) used by the socket server
  socket.receive.buffer.bytes=102400
  
  # The maximum size of a request that the socket server will accept (protection against OOM)
  socket.request.max.bytes=104857600
  
  
  ############################# Log Basics #############################
  
  # A comma seperated list of directories under which to store log files
  log.dirs=/zkafka/kafka
  
  # The default number of log partitions per topic. More partitions allow greater
  # parallelism for consumption, but this will also result in more files across
  # the brokers.
  num.partitions=1
  
  # The number of threads per data directory to be used for log recovery at startup and flushing at shutdown.
  # This value is recommended to be increased for installations with data dirs located in RAID array.
  num.recovery.threads.per.data.dir=1
  
  ############################# Internal Topic Settings  #############################
  # The replication factor for the group metadata internal topics &quot;__consumer_offsets&quot; and &quot;__transaction_state&quot;
  # For anything other than development testing, a value greater than 1 is recommended for to ensure availability such as 3.
  offsets.topic.replication.factor=1
  transaction.state.log.replication.factor=1
  transaction.state.log.min.isr=1
  
  ############################# Log Flush Policy #############################
  
  # Messages are immediately written to the filesystem but by default we only fsync() to sync
  # the OS cache lazily. The following configurations control the flush of data to disk.
  # There are a few important trade-offs here:
  #    1. Durability: Unflushed data may be lost if you are not using replication.
  #    2. Latency: Very large flush intervals may lead to latency spikes when the flush does occur as there will be a lot of data to flush.
  #    3. Throughput: The flush is generally the most expensive operation, and a small flush interval may lead to exceessive seeks.
  # The settings below allow one to configure the flush policy to flush data after a period of time or
  # every N messages (or both). This can be done globally and overridden on a per-topic basis.
  
  # The number of messages to accept before forcing a flush of data to disk
  #log.flush.interval.messages=10000
  
  # The maximum amount of time a message can sit in a log before we force a flush
  #log.flush.interval.ms=1000
  
  ############################# Log Retention Policy #############################
  
  # The following configurations control the disposal of log segments. The policy can
  # be set to delete segments after a period of time, or after a given size has accumulated.
  # A segment will be deleted whenever *either* of these criteria are met. Deletion always happens
  # from the end of the log.
  
  # The minimum age of a log file to be eligible for deletion due to age
  log.retention.hours=1
  
  # A size-based retention policy for logs. Segments are pruned from the log as long as the remaining
  # segments don't drop below log.retention.bytes. Functions independently of log.retention.hours.
  #log.retention.bytes=1073741824
  
  # The maximum size of a log segment file. When this size is reached a new log segment will be created.
  log.segment.bytes=1073741824
  
  # The interval at which log segments are checked to see if they can be deleted according
  # to the retention policies
  log.retention.check.interval.ms=30000
  
  ############################# Zookeeper #############################
  
  # Zookeeper connection string (see zookeeper docs for details).
  # This is a comma separated host:port pairs, each corresponding to a zk
  # server. e.g. &quot;127.0.0.1:3000,127.0.0.1:3001,127.0.0.1:3002&quot;.
  # You can also append an optional chroot string to the urls to specify the
  # root directory for all kafka znodes.
  zookeeper.connect=zkafka01vdc-int:2181,zkafka02vdc-int:2181,zkafka03vdc-int:2181
  
  # Timeout in ms for connecting to zookeeper
  zookeeper.connection.timeout.ms=6000
  
  
  ############################# Group Coordinator Settings #############################
  
  # The following configuration specifies the time, in milliseconds, that the GroupCoordinator will delay the initial consumer rebalance.
  # The rebalance will be further delayed by the value of group.initial.rebalance.delay.ms as new members join the group, up to a maximum of max.poll.interval.ms.
  # The default value for this is 3 seconds.
  # We override this to 0 here as it makes for a better out-of-the-box experience for development and testing.
  # However, in production environments the default value of 3 seconds is more suitable as this will help to avoid unnecessary, and potentially expensive, rebalances during application startup.
  group.initial.rebalance.delay.ms=0
  </code></pre>