[nezirus]

Kafka doesn't do any stupid tricks, but uses the underlying platform for the full potential: https://kafka.apache.org/documentation/#linuxflush

With the usual recommended settings, XFS filesystem, 3 replicas, 2 "in-sync" replicas, etc., it is rather safe. You can also tune background flush to your liking.

The above tradeoffs are very reasonable and Kafka runs very fast on slow disk s(magnetic or in cloud), and even faster on SSD/NVMe disks.