// If no preperation is required, remove all content from here

==== Prepare for the deployment

- If deploying into an existing VPC, create an Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (MSK) cluster. For more information, see https://docs.aws.amazon.com/msk/latest/developerguide/before-you-begin.html[Setting Up Amazon MSK].
- (Optional) Configure Amazon MSK with https://docs.aws.amazon.com/msk/latest/developerguide/msk-password.html[SASL/SCRAM (Simple Authentication and Security Layer/Salted Challenge Response Authentication Mechanism) authentication].
- (Optional) Create an Amazon RDS PostgreSQL database. For more information, see https://aws.amazon.com/getting-started/hands-on/create-connect-postgresql-db/[Create and Connect to a PostgreSQL Database].