I think that's expected without manual configuration. (Though it is still a sad thing that it no longer works out of box)....

But still getting an exception when starting:...

I can resolve the log4j issue - not a problem. But still getting an exception when starting:...

In my case I am using it for local testing and not production....

I've put a package without zookeeper in testing if you want to try it out. You might need to go through migration first before upgrading to >3.9 ve...