This issue was introduced with 9e2ff42 / #3600.
The new AlarmServerMain.ensureKafkaTopics methods has a kafka_props_file parameter, but does not use it. This leads to an error while trying to create the Kafka topics when a non-default configuration is needed.
The fix is a trivial three-line patch. I am going to open a PR for this – this issue is just so that I can reference something in the commit.