Kafka consumer stuck in (Re-)joining group

Question

Whats the default behavior of kafka (version 0.10) consumer if it tries to rejoin the consumer group. I am using a single consumer for a consumer group but it seems like it got

Answer 1

If you're gonna to have only one consumer instance in a group, then use the consumer with manual assignment strategy. (Simple Consumer).

Manual topic assignment does not use the consumer's group management functionality so heart beats are not required.