Describe a Channel

Using the AWS Management Console

1. Open the Amazon MSK console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/msk/home?region=us-east-1#/home/.

2. In the navigation pane, choose Clusters.

3. Choose the name of your Amazon MSK Provisioned cluster with Express brokers.

4. Choose the Channel tab.

5. Choose the name of the Channel to describe.

The detail page shows source topic, destination, delivery settings, current state, and recent Amazon CloudWatch metrics.

Using the AWS CLI

aws kafka describe-channel \
    --cluster-arn "arn:aws:kafka:us-east-1:123456789012:cluster/my-express-cluster/abc123" \
    --channel-arn "arn:aws:kafka:us-east-1:123456789012:channel/my-express-cluster/abc123/orders-channel"

The following is an example response for an S3 Tables destination.

{
    "ChannelArn": "arn:aws:kafka:us-east-1:123456789012:channel/my-express-cluster/abc123/orders-channel",
    "ChannelName": "orders-channel",
    "TopicConfigurationList": [
        {
            "TopicArn": "arn:aws:kafka:us-east-1:123456789012:topic/my-express-cluster/abc123/orders-topic",
            "RecordConverter": { "ValueConverter": "JSON" },
            "RecordSchema": { "GsrArn": "arn:aws:glue:us-east-1:123456789012:schema/my-registry/orders-schema" }
        }
    ],
    "IcebergDestinationConfiguration": {
        "ServiceExecutionRoleArn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/MSKChannelRole",
        "DataFreshnessInSeconds": 300,
        "Catalog": {
            "WarehouseLocation": "arn:aws:s3tables:us-east-1:123456789012:bucket/analytics-table-bucket"
        },
        "DeadLetterQueueS3": {
            "BucketArn": "arn:aws:s3:::my-dlq-bucket",
            "ErrorOutputPrefix": "dlq/"
        },
        "DestinationTableList": [
            {
                "DestinationDatabaseName": "analytics_db",
                "DestinationTableName": "orders_iceberg",
                "PartitionSpec": {
                    "PartitionStrategy": "TIME_HOUR",
                    "SourceList": [ { "SourceName": "timestamp" } ]
                }
            }
        ],
        "CompressionType": "ZSTD"
    },
    "Status": "ACTIVE",
    "DestinationType": "ICEBERG",
    "CreationTime": "2026-06-18T10:30:00.000Z"
}

Note

Status is one of CREATING, ACTIVE, UPDATING, DELETING, FAILED, SUSPENDING, SUSPENDED. When Status is FAILED, the response includes a StateInfo object with a Code and Message describing the cause. While an operation is in flight (CREATING, UPDATING, DELETING), the response also includes ClusterOperationArn.

API reference — see DescribeChannel in the Amazon MSK API Reference.