I am able to fix this issue, posting the resolution here just in case if it helps anyone. I was using the embedded zookeeper which comes with Kafka. I see the below code is missing in the zookeeper server start script which will initialize the environment for the zookeeper. After adding the below code, the jvm process is able to pick the jaas file properly and sasl configuration is complete. After this Kafka is able to SASL auth to zookeeper without any issues.   if [ "x$KAFKA_OPTS" = "x" ]; then     export KAFKA_OPTS="-Djava.security.auth.login.config=/home/zookeeper/zookeeper_jaas.conf" fi ... View more