// This assembly is included in the following assemblies:
//
// assembly-deployment-configuration-kafka.adoc

[id='assembly-zookeeper-connection-{context}']

= ZooKeeper connection

ZooKeeper services are secured with encryption and authentication and are not intended to be used by external applications that are not part of {ProductName}.

However, if you want to use Kafka CLI tools that require a connection to ZooKeeper, such as the `kafka-topics` tool, you can use a terminal inside a Kafka container and connect to the local end of the TLS tunnel to ZooKeeper by using `localhost:2181` as the ZooKeeper address.

include::../modules/proc-connecting-to-zookeeper.adoc[leveloffset=+1]
