How to create a reliable and fast Kafka Producer in a web server?

Hi,

I am using Playframework to build a web server that needs to handle very
heavy traffic. And it has a Kafka Producer sending messages to Kafka
brokers.

Currently I am using the synchronized Kafka producer API and seems like
it's affecting the performance of the web server. I am considering
switching to async Producer API but not sure how reliable it is(I heard it
might loss message). Are there any other options to minimize the Producer's
affect to the server.

Thanks,
Haojin