From what I understand a consumer reads messages off a particular topic, and the consumer client will periodically commit the offset.
So if for some reason the consumer fails a particular message, that offset won't be committed and you can then go back and reprocess he message.
Is there anything that tracks the offset you just consumed and the offset you then commit?
Does kafka distinguish between consumed offset and commited offset?
Yes, there is a big difference. The consumed offset is managed by the consumer in such a way that the consumer will fetch subsequent messages out of a topic partition.
The consumer can (but it is not a must) commit a message either automatically or by calling the commit API. The information is stored in a Kafka internal topic called __consumer_offsets and stores the committed offset based on ConsumerGroup, Topic and Partition. It will be used if the client is getting restartet or a new consumer joins/leaves the ConsumerGroup.
Just keep in mind that if your client does not committ offset n but later committs offset n+1, for Kafka it won't make a different to the case when you commit both offsets.
Edit: More details on consumed and committed offsets can be found in the JavaDocs of KafkaConsumer on Offsets and Consumer Position:
Kafka maintains a numerical offset for each record in a partition. This offset acts as a unique identifier of a record within that partition, and also denotes the position of the consumer in the partition. For example, a consumer which is at position 5 has consumed records with offsets 0 through 4 and will next receive the record with offset 5. There are actually two notions of position relevant to the user of the consumer:
The position of the consumer gives the offset of the next record that will be given out. It will be one larger than the highest offset the consumer has seen in that partition. It automatically advances every time the consumer receives messages in a call to poll(Duration).
The committed position is the last offset that has been stored securely. Should the process fail and restart, this is the offset that the consumer will recover to. The consumer can either automatically commit offsets periodically; or it can choose to control this committed position manually by calling one of the commit APIs (e.g. commitSync and commitAsync).
This distinction gives the consumer control over when a record is considered consumed. It is discussed in further detail below.
