You are not even a little bit confused! I think you have it perfectly right. And you are not alone in not thinking of Kafka as persistent storage, but when you

You are not even a little bit confused! I think you have it perfectly right. And you are not alone in not thinking of Kafka as persistent storage, but when you get down to it there is no reason not to, and people are indeed using it in just that way. And yes, Confluent does give its +1 to this practice. :)