Docs Cloud Deploy Dedicated Dedicated Cluster Quickstart Redpanda Cloud Quickstart The fastest and easiest way to start data streaming is with a Serverless cluster free trial. Redpanda instantly prepares an account for you that includes a welcome cluster with a hello-world demo topic you can explore. You interact with Serverless clusters the same way you’d interact with Dedicated or BYOC clusters. To learn more, see Serverless. The following steps describe how to spin up a Dedicated cluster with Redpanda Cloud, create a basic streaming application using the rpk command-line tool, and explore your cluster in Redpanda Console. Prerequisites Sign up for a trial of Redpanda Cloud - Dedicated Clusters. Deploy Redpanda To create a Dedicated Cloud cluster, log in to Redpanda Cloud. On the Clusters page, click Create cluster, then click Create Dedicated cluster. For cluster settings, enter redpandaquickstart for the cluster name. Use default values for the remaining properties, and click Next. On the Networking page, use the default Public connection type, and click Create. Wait for your network and your cluster to be created. Start streaming To start building a basic streaming application, you can use rpk, Redpanda’s CLI, to create a topic, produce messages to it, and consume messages from it. Install rpk on your local machine: The rpk binary is not supported on Windows. Linux macOS Download the rpk archive for Linux. To download the latest version of rpk: curl -LO https://github.com/redpanda-data/redpanda/releases/latest/download/rpk-linux-amd64.zip To download a version other than the latest: curl -LO https://github.com/redpanda-data/redpanda/releases/download/v<version>/rpk-linux-amd64.zip Ensure that you have the folder ~/.local/bin: mkdir -p ~/.local/bin Add it to your $PATH: export PATH="~/.local/bin:$PATH" Unzip the rpk files to your ~/.local/bin/ directory: unzip rpk-linux-amd64.zip -d ~/.local/bin/ Run rpk --version to display the version of the rpk binary: rpk --version rpk version 24.2.12 (rev 044242a) If you don’t have Homebrew installed, install it. Install rpk: brew install redpanda-data/tap/redpanda Run rpk --version to display the version of the rpk binary: rpk --version rpk version 24.2.12 (rev 044242a) This method installs the latest version of rpk, which is supported only with the latest version of Redpanda. On the Overview page of Redpanda Cloud, copy your bootstrap server address and set it as an environment variable on your local machine: export RPK_BROKERS="<bootstrap-server-address>" In Redpanda Cloud, go to Security and create a user called redpanda-chat-account that uses the SCRAM-SHA-256 mechanism. Copy the password, and set the following environment variables on your local machine: export REDPANDA_SASL_USERNAME="redpanda-chat-account" export REDPANDA_SASL_PASSWORD="<password>" export REDPANDA_SASL_MECHANISM="SCRAM-SHA-256" In Redpanda Cloud, click the name of your user and add the following permissions to the ACL (access control list): Host: * Topic name: chat-room Operations: All Click Create. Use rpk on your local machine to authenticate to Redpanda as the redpanda-chat-account user and get information about the cluster: rpk cluster info -X tls.enabled=true Create a topic called chat-room. You granted permissions to the redpanda-chat-account user to access only this topic. rpk topic create chat-room -X tls.enabled=true Output: TOPIC STATUS chat-room OK Produce a message to the topic: rpk topic produce chat-room -X tls.enabled=true Enter a message, then press Enter: Pandas are fabulous! Example output: Produced to partition 0 at offset 0 with timestamp 1663282629789. Press Ctrl+C to finish producing messages to the topic. Consume one message from the topic: rpk topic consume chat-room --num 1 -X tls.enabled=true Your message is displayed along with its metadata: { "topic": "chat-room", "value": "Pandas are fabulous!", "timestamp": 1663282629789, "partition": 0, "offset": 0 } Explore your topic In Redpanda Cloud, go to Topics > chat-room. The message that you produced to the topic is displayed along with some other details about the topic. Clean up If you don’t want to continue experimenting with your cluster, you can delete it. Go to Cluster settings and click Delete cluster. Next steps Learn more about Redpanda Cloud Suggested reading Learn more about rpk and explore the rpk commands that you used in this quickstart: rpk cluster rpk topic create rpk topic produce rpk topic consume Back to top × Simple online edits For simple changes, such as fixing a typo, you can edit the content directly on GitHub. Edit on GitHub Or, open an issue to let us know about something that you want us to change. Open an issue Contribution guide For extensive content updates, or if you prefer to work locally, read our contribution guide . Was this helpful? thumb_up thumb_down group Ask in the community mail Share your feedback group_add Make a contribution Dedicated Create a Dedicated Cloud Cluster