Release Notes for Confluent Cloud

Confluent Cloud is regularly updated with improvements and new features. This page highlights significant new and updated features in Confluent Cloud by release date.

2024 Releases

November 22, 2024

The following features are now available in Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink®:

• Move statements between compute pools: Compute pools are crucial for managing both budget and workload isolation. To give you more control and flexibility, you can now move statements between pools, which can be particularly useful if you’re close to maxing out the resources in one pool.
• Change security principal: If you have statements in production that were created with a user account, now you can switch these statements to a service account, which provides better security and stability, ensuring that your statements aren’t affected by changes in user status or authorization.

November 20, 2024

Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink is now available in the AWS region ca-central-1 and Azure brazilsouth, francecentral, and northeurope. For more information, see Supported Cloud Regions for Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink.

November 18, 2024

The following features have been added to Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink:

• View Support: Introduces CREATE VIEW, ALTER VIEW, and DROP VIEW statements for creating and managing virtual tables. Views can simplify complex queries, and provide a consistent interface to the underlying tables while abstracting away implementation details, significantly simplifying query management and promoting code reuse across your Flink SQL applications.
• The kafka.producer.compression.type table option is now supported on Flink tables for configuring the compression type for producers. This allows optimizing network and storage usage by compressing records before sending to Kafka.
• The kafka.consumer.isolation-level property is now available on Flink tables to control which transactional messages are read by Flink. This enables trade-offs between latency and consistency, allowing consumption of in-progress transactions if needed. For more information, see delivery guarantees and latency.
• When using private networking, cross-environment queries are now supported, bringing parity with statements created on public networking: a statement in an environment accessed by a PrivateLink Attachment can now use three-part-name references, for example, SELECT * from mycatalog.mydatabase.mytable, to access tables in other environments.

November 7, 2024

The following features have been added to Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink:

• Carry-over-offset between statements: This feature improves CI/CD for stateless statements by enabling a new statement to process data where a previous one stopped, which avoids unnecessary re-processing and minimizes catch-up time when updating query logic. For more information, see Schema and Statement Evolution.

New performance metrics and observability improvements are available in Confluent Cloud Console:

• Watermarks: Now you have visibility on watermarks, a critical feature that shows how “fresh” your data is. Viewing watermarks is an essential tool for debugging Flink statements.
• Per-table metrics: Flink metrics like watermarks and number of messages are now emitted per table, which enables more fine-grained observability. These metrics are available in the Cloud Console and the Metrics API.
• Enhanced Statement details: The upgraded statement details panel in Cloud Console offers granular metrics at the topic/table level, giving you a transparent view of how messages are being read from sources and written to sinks.
• Stability indicators: Now you can see when back pressure is increasing on your queries, alerting you to potential performance issues.

For more information, see Monitor and Manage Flink Statements.

October 28, 2024

Confluent Cloud Enterprise clusters now support connecting to external data systems, such as Azure services, AWS services, MongoDB, Snowflake, and others through AWS PrivateLink or Azure Private Link with fully managed connectors.

For details, see AWS Egress PrivateLink Endpoints for Serverless Products.

For details, see Azure Egress Private Link Endpoints for Serverless Products.

October 21, 2024

Mutual TLS (mTLS) authentication for Confluent Cloud Dedicated clusters is promoted to General Availability (GA). For details, see mTLS for Confluent Cloud.

The following features are now available in Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink:

• Resume a stopped statement: Ensures that statements can continue after resolving upstream issues or during operational pauses.
• Support for SESSION Windows: SESSION windows group elements by sessions of activity. Unlike TUMBLE and HOP windows, session windows don’t overlap and don’t have a fixed start and end time. Instead, they group events automatically based on their time. For more information see: SESSION Windows.
• Schema context support: Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink now fully supports Schema context from Schema Registry. It automatically detects and uses the appropriate schema context for your Flink tables, minimizing manual intervention.
• Support for state TTL per table: This feature gives you precise control over state retention at the individual operator level. For more information, see: Dynamic Table Options.

October 15, 2024

You can now use IBM MQ’s HA/DR support by adding multiple hosts in the mq.connection.list. For more details, see IBM MQ Connection.

October 14, 2024

You can now use Client-side field level encryption (CSFLE) to make your data more secure on fully-managed connectors. For more information on CSFLE setup in supported source and sink connectors, see Manage CSFLE for connectors.

October 9, 2024

Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink is now available in the AWS regions ap-northeast-2 and sa-east-1.

October 7, 2024

Client-side field level encryption (CSFLE), is promoted to General Availability (GA). CSFLE provides an additional layer of security on Confluent Cloud for protection of sensitive data, safeguarding data in motion throughout its lifecycle across producers and consumers.

For details, see Protect Sensitive Data Using Client-Side Field Level Encryption on Confluent Cloud.

Confluent Cloud Provider Integration is promoted to General Availability (GA). You can now configure AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles in Confluent through Confluent Cloud Console, Confluent CLI, Confluent APIs, or Confluent Terraform Provider. These IAM roles can then be used to configure and authorize fully-managed connectors, allowing you to create a secure access connection between AWS source or sink resources and Confluent Cloud for data ingestion or transfer.

For more information, see Quick Start for Confluent Cloud Provider Integration.

October 3, 2024

You can now use Confluent Cloud Console to reset offsets for generic consumer groups. For more information, see Reset Offsets for Consumer Groups in Confluent Cloud.

October 1, 2024

Mutual TLS (mTLS) support for Confluent Cloud is now available as a Limited Availability feature for select Confluent customers. To request early access before General Availability, please contact Confluent Support.

mTLS can be used for client certificate authentication and to provide granular access control to Confluent Cloud Dedicated clusters.

For details, see mTLS for Confluent Cloud.

September 30, 2024

ksqlDB version 7.7.0-318 was released to Confluent Cloud.

September 16, 2024

Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink is now available in the Azure centralus and Azure australiaeast regions.

The following features have been added to Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink:

• Flexible schemas
  • Schema-less topics: Flink now supports events backed by Kafka topics in which the bytestream isn’t serialized with Schema Registry serializers, but instead plain Avro, JSON or Protobuf. You can submit the schema to Schema Registry and query the table immediately.
  • Support for schema references: Flink now supports schema reference for Avro, Protobuf, and JSON. This is the preferred method to use multiple event types in the same table (topic).
• SQL improvements
  • CREATE TABLE AS (CTAS) statement: Now you can create and populate tables with the results of a query by using a single statement.
  • EXPLAIN: You can view and analyze the query plans of Flink SQL statements.
  • Support for dynamic table hints: You can specify table options on a per-statement basis for options like scan.startup.mode.
  • Windows Aggregate can now be used with retract streams.
• Table API for Java and Python is available in Open Preview. Get started with the Java Table API Quick Start and Python Table API Quick Start guides.
• AI model inference is available in Open Preview. Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink supports AI model inference and enables using models as resources in Flink SQL, similar to tables and functions. Models running on the following solutions are supported: AWS Bedrock, AWS Sagemaker, Azure OpenAI, Azure ML, Google AI, OpenAI, and Vertex AI. For more information, see Run an AI Model.

September 11, 2024

Added capability to Confluent Cloud Console to produce messages with an associated schema. For more information, see Use Message Browser in Confluent Cloud and this blog post: Producing Messages With a Schema in Confluent Cloud Console.

September 6, 2024

• Oracle Database versions 11g, 12c and 18c are deprecated. Confluent will end support for these versions on June 30, 2025. For more details, see Oracle CDC Source Connector for Confluent Cloud Overview and Features.
• The following connectors are now generally available for your Apache Kafka® clusters on AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.
  • The fully-managed HTTP Source V2 connector integrates Apache Kafka® with an API using HTTP or HTTPS and allows you to configure one or more APIs seamlessly with an OpenAPI/Swagger specification file. To explore a full range of features and get started with the connector, see HTTP Source V2 Connector for Confluent Cloud.
  • The fully-managed HTTP Sink V2 connector integrates Apache Kafka® with an API using HTTP or HTTPS and allows you to configure up to 15 APIs seamlessly with an OpenAPI specification file. To explore a full range of features and get started with the connector, see HTTP Sink V2 Connector for Confluent Cloud.

September 4, 2024

The default service quota for API keys per service account (resource-scoped to Kafka cluster) has been increased from 10 to 100. For details, see Service Quotas for API keys.

August 23, 2024

Flink Private Networking on AWS has reached General Availability (GA) after a successful Limited Availability phase with several customers onboarded. This release allows customers to connect to Flink over Private Link (PL) to access Enterprise and Dedicated clusters using various AWS connectivity options such as Private Link, Transit Gateway, or VPC Peering. Customers can now connect to Flink over PL to access Enterprise and Dedicated clusters using any type of connectivity in AWS. Flink queries can process, join, and move data across various Dedicated clusters, enabling customers to gain insights and create rich transformations on their private data.

August 20, 2024

The Schema Registry cluster management (SRCM) v2 regions API and v2 clusters API is deprecated and will no longer be supported after February 2025. Related Confluent CLI commands and Confluent Terraform Provider resources and data sources that rely on this API will also no longer be supported.

For information on how to upgrade to SRCM API v3, Confluent CLI and Terraform upgrades, along with details on the v2 deprecation timeframes, see Deprecation of SRCM v2 clusters and regions APIs and upgrade guide.

August 19, 2024

Early Access to the Confluent Cloud Provider Integration is now available. You can use Provider Integration APIs to manage provider integration configurations by mapping AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles in Confluent. Using the integration, you can create a secure access connection between source or sink resources on AWS and Confluent Cloud for data ingestion or transfer.

For more information, see Quick Start for Confluent Cloud Provider Integration.

August 15, 2024

Confluent Terraform Provider v2.0.0 is now generally available. Version 2 supports the Always-On Governance feature of Confluent Cloud, providing compatibility with the latest version of the Confluent Cloud Stream Governance APIs.

• View the full changelog on Github.
• Learn about upgrading to version 2.

August 6, 2024

In continuing our efforts to provide robust security controls, changes were made to the Azure VNET peering configuration steps (at step 4.4).

July 25, 2024

• Five additional Confluent Cloud metrics are now available to query directly using the Metrics API. For more information, see Monitor Dedicated Clusters in Confluent Cloud and Dedicated Cluster Performance and Expansion in Confluent Cloud.
  • cluster_load_percent_avg
  • cluster_load_percent_max
  • dedicated_cku_count
  • hot_partition_ingress
  • hot_partition_egress
• Enterprise clusters are now available in the swedencentral (Gävle) region in Azure.

July 19, 2024

The fully-managed Google Cloud Functions Gen 2 Sink connector for Confluent Cloud integrates Apache Kafka® with Google Cloud Functions. For basic information about functions, see Google Cloud Functions. The connector consumes records from Kafka topic(s) and executes a Google Cloud Function. The connector supports both Gen 1 and Gen 2 functions.

For more information, see Google Cloud Functions Gen 2 Sink Connector for Confluent Cloud.

July 17, 2024

ksqlDB version 7.7.0-223 was released to Confluent Cloud.

July 11, 2024

Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink now supports AWS PrivateLink Attachment on Enterprise clusters and is generally available for production use. Flink can securely read and write data stored in Confluent Cloud clusters that are located in private networking, with no data flowing to the public internet.

For more information, see Enable Private Networking with Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink.

---

Client-side field level encryption (CSFLE), in Limited Availability, adds support for:

• Confluent .NET Client
• Confluent Go Client

For details, see CSFLE requirements.

July 8, 2024

Mutual TLS (mTLS) support for Confluent Cloud is now available as an Early Access feature. You can use mTLS for client certificate authentication and granular access control to Confluent Cloud Dedicated clusters.

For details, see mTLS for Confluent Cloud.

---

The fully managed DynamoDB CDC Source connector is now available for your Apache Kafka® clusters on AWS. The connector supports the following three modes:

• SNAPSHOT: Only allows a one-time scan of the existing data in the source table(s) simultaneously.
• CDC: Only allows CDC with DynamoDB stream(s) without an initial snapshot for all streams simultaneously.
• SNAPSHOT_CDC (default): Allows an initial snapshot of all configured tables; once the snapshot is complete, starts CDC streaming using DynamoDB streams.

For more details, see Amazon DynamoDB CDC Source Connector for Confluent Cloud.

July 3, 2024

Managing SSO access to the Confluent Support Portal is now in General Availability. For more information, see Manage SSO Access to Confluent Support Portal on Confluent Cloud.

June 24, 2024

• Support for Avro unions in Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink has been added. Avro unions are used to define multiple event types in one topic. Previously, you could not read or write to tables that were backed by a schema using Avro unions. When Avro unions are used, the schema is inferred as a ROW type, similar to how the the feature is supported for JSON and Protobuf.
• The JSON_QUERY function now supports returning arrays. JSON_QUERY is one of the Flink JSON functions that returns objects, arrays, and other non-scalar types. You can now specify the JSON_QUERY return type to be ARRAY<STRING>, instead of STRING.
• The Kafka Connect Google BigQuery Sink V2 connector for Confluent Cloud now supports upsert and delete functionality for ingested data. With the upsert feature, you can insert new data, or update existing data with matching keys. The upsert and delete functionality adds the option to insert new data, update existing matching key data, or remove data with matching keys for tombstone records. For more details, see Google BigQuery Sink V2 Connector for Confluent Cloud.

June 17, 2024

API key management in the Confluent Cloud Console is simplified and improved. In the API keys section, you can create API keys using resource scopes for clusters (Kafka, Schema Registry, and ksqlDB), Flink regions, and cloud resource management. For more information, see Resource scopes and Manage API Keys in Confluent Cloud.

June 11, 2024

Custom offset management for fully-managed connectors is generally available. Use custom offsets to manage the offsets of supported connectors. This includes use cases like migrating from self-managed connectors to fully-managed connectors. For more information, see Manage Offsets for Fully-Managed Connectors in Confluent Cloud.

June 10, 2024

Terraform support for the freight Kafka cluster type in the confluent_kafka_cluster resource is available in Early Access.

June 6, 2024

ksqlDB version 7.7.0-184 was released to Confluent Cloud.

June 3, 2024

A bug was fixed that occurred during creation of a Flink API key. Previously, only 10 service accounts were shown in the dropdown when you selected a service account. Now you can now see all service accounts in the dropdown.

May 30, 2024

The minimum value for max.compaction.lag.ms has changed from 7 days (604800000) to 6 hours (21600000). For more information, see max.compaction.lag.ms.

May 29, 2024

On June 6, 2024, the Let’s Encrypt R3 intermediate certificate expires. If you pinned to this expiring intermediate certificate, you should remove any intermediate certificate and replace it with the root certificate. For more information, see:

• Manage TLS certificates
• New Intermediate TLS Certificates rollout starting June 6th

May 24, 2024

The default service quota for SSO group mappings per organization has been increased from 12 to 100.

The new Gateway scope service quota limits for gateways connecting to Confluent Cloud using a Private Link connection are now available. The new service quota limits include “Access points per gateway” (default is 10) and “DNS records per gateway” (default is 20).

Principals that have the FlinkDeveloper role can now delete Flink statements.

May 23, 2024

The default retention for Flink statements in terminal states (COMPLETED, FAILED, STOPPED) has now been changed from 7 days to 30 days.

May 22, 2024

Users are no longer required to specify the principal manually when submitting Flink statements to the Statements API by using the Flink API key. The principal field is now optional and auto-assigned, so the system infers the principal associated with the Flink API key and assigns it automatically to the request. This behavior is the same for all types of supported authorization.

May 22, 2024

The fully-managed Amazon S3 Source connector now supports CSV and Parquet input data formats. For more details, see Amazon S3 Source Connector for Confluent Cloud.

May 17, 2024

The default service quota for RBAC role bindings in a Dedicated Kafka cluster has been increased from 5000 to 25000.

May 15, 2024

Three additional Flink compute pool metrics (current_cfus, cfu_limit, and cfu_minutes_consumed) are now available to query directly by using the Metrics API and Datadog.

May 10, 2024

• You can now run a Flink SQL statement without stopping the currently running statement explicitly. Previously, an editor cell was completely locked while a statement was running. To run the next statement in the same cell, the running statement had to be stopped explicitly. This behavior has been improved so an editor cell is locked only while the statement is starting. As soon as the statement is running, the editor is unlocked and editable, and you can submit the next statement immediately.
• Improved Flink compute pool deletion behavior so actively running statements stop automatically when a compute pool is deleted.
• Statement sets are now supported within SQL editor cells in workspaces.
• Improved synchronization between Flink statement status in an editor cell and the Flink statement’s details panel to prevent out-of-sync issues.
• The catalog browser in workspaces is now horizontally resizable, making long topic names more accessible.

May 9, 2024

Confluent Cloud now supports outbound Azure Private Link connections using Egress Access Points. Egress Access Points enable fully managed Confluent connectors to access services from Azure Private Link Service providers such as Microsoft, MongoDB, Snowflake, and others.

Egress Access Points are currently supported for Dedicated Clusters with Azure Private Link or AWS PrivateLink networking.

For details, see Azure Egress Access Points for Dedicated Clusters.

April 29, 2024

Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink is now available in AWS (ap-south-1), Azure (centralindia) and Google Cloud (asia-south1, asia-south2).

April 17, 2024

Enterprise Kafka clusters now support one eCKU as a minimum instead of two. For more information, see eCKU limits per Enterprise cluster.

April 11, 2024

Client-side field level encryption (CSFLE) is now available in Limited Availability as a fully supported feature recommended for production use. CSFLE provides an additional layer of security on Confluent Cloud for protection of sensitive data, safeguarding data in motion throughout its lifecycle across producers and consumers. For more information, see Protect Sensitive Data Using Client-Side Field Level Encryption on Confluent Cloud.

To be considered for access before General Availability, contact Confluent Support.

---

Enterprise clusters are available in the following Microsoft Azure regions:

• australiaeast
• brazilsouth
• canadacentral
• centralus
• eastasia
• eastus
• eastus2
• germanywestcentral
• northeurope
• southeastasia
• uksouth
• westeurope

For details about Enterprise clusters, see Enterprise clusters.

April 10, 2024

Default user permissions now apply to all SSO user accounts in new SSO-enabled organizations. A new default group mapping binds all SSO user accounts to the DataDiscovery and FlinkDeveloper roles, providing permissions to access Confluent Cloud resources, including Flink and Data Portal. Existing SSO-enabled organizations can opt-in. For more information, see Default user permissions.

The fully-managed OpenSearch Sink connector is now generally available for your Apache Kafka® clusters on AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. The connector provides a simple and secure way to stream data from Confluent Cloud to OpenSearch and supports both AWS and OSS OpenSearch. For more details, see OpenSearch Sink Connector for Confluent Cloud.

April 5, 2024

Service quota default for User accounts (active and invited) per organization is now 1,000 (increased from 500).

OAuth 2.0 authentication using Confluent Security Token Service (STS) access tokens (confluent-sts-access-token) for authorization to access Confluent Cloud resources is now available for all control plane Confluent Cloud APIs. Support is added for notifications/v1, sd/v1, service-quota, srcm/v2, billing/v1, cdx/v1, partner/v2, byok/v1, metrics, flink, and kafka-quota/v1. For more information, see the API Reference for Confluent Cloud.

April 3, 2024

Service quotas for RBAC role bindings have been updated:

• Organization scope includes a new quota, RBAC role bindings (total), and the updated quota, RBAC role bindings (with Kafka permissions), no longer limiting role bindings without Kafka permissions.
• Schema Registry Cluster scope has been removed, and the RBAC role bindings are incorporated in the new quota for RBAC role bindings (total) at the Organization scope.
• Kafka Cluster scope includes an updated quota, RBAC role bindings (with Kafka permissions), which no longer limits role bindings without Kafka permissions.
• All RBAC role binding quotas now provide usage data.

March 29, 2024

Confluent Cloud now supports outbound AWS PrivateLink connections using Egress Access Points. Egress Access Points enable fully managed Confluent connectors to access services from AWS PrivateLink Service providers such as AWS, MongoDB, Snowflake, and others.

Egress Access Points are currently supported for Dedicated Clusters with AWS PrivateLink networking.

For details, see AWS Egress Access Points for Dedicated Clusters.

March 28, 2024

Managing SSO access to the Confluent Support Portal is now in Early Access. For more information, see Manage SSO Access to Confluent Support Portal on Confluent Cloud.

March 25, 2024

The throughput cluster limits and capacity guidelines for Dedicated and Enterprise Kafka clusters have changed.

• For Enterprise clusters, capacity guidance for ingress is 60 megabytes per second (MBps) per CKU with an upper limit of 300 megabytes and egress is 180 MBps per CKU with a 900 megabyte limit. Per partitions limits for Enterprise are now 6 MBps for ingress and 18 MBps for egress.
• For Dedicated clusters, capacity guidance for ingress is 60 MBps per CKU with an upper limit of 9,120 megabytes and egress is 180 MBps per CKU with a 27,360 megabyte limit. Per partitions limits for Dedicated are now 12 MBps for ingress and 36 MBps for egress.

For more information, see eCKU capacity guidance, Limits per CKU, and Dimensions with a recommended guideline.

March 19, 2024

Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink is promoted to General Availability.

Auditable event methods for Apache Flink and Auditable event methods for Flink authentication and authorization are promoted to General Availability. These auditable event methods are triggered by operations on Flink authentication, authorization, regions, compute pools, workspaces, and statements.

March 5, 2024

Stream Lineage for Flink is now available providing complete end-to-end visibility for Flink SQL statements.

March 4, 2024

A new predefined RBAC role, BillingAdmin, is now generally available. This role allows users to view and manage billing information for an organization. For more information, see BillingAdmin.

IP Filtering is now generally available for production use. Use IP Filtering to enhance the security of your Confluent Cloud resources by restricting access to trusted network locations. This extra layer of access control protects against compromised credentials being used to manage Confluent Cloud from unauthorized IP addresses.

February 29, 2024

RBAC role bindings usage data is now available for the following scopes: Organization and Kafka cluster. For details about using the Quotas API to view your usage data, see Service Quotas API for Confluent Cloud resources.

February 22, 2024

Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink is now available for preview in Google Cloud (asia-southeast1, australia-southeast1, europe-west1, europe-west3, us-central1, us-east1, us-east4, and us-west4).

February 21, 2024

Confluent Cloud now supports resolving private DNS names from a DNS resolver within your own VPC or VNet via DNS forwarding. This feature enables fully managed connectors to access endpoints using private DNS zones.

DNS forwarding is supported for AWS VPC peering, AWS Transit Gateway connection, or Azure VNet peering in Confluent Cloud.

For details, see DNS forwarding for AWS Peering, DNS forwarding for AWS Transit Gateway, and DNS for Azure Peering.

February 16, 2024

Early Access is now available for the confluent-kafka-javascript client, a librdkafka-based client with APIs that are compatible with the KafkaJS and node-rdkafka libraries. For early access, only basic produce and consume functionality is available, along with the ability to create and delete topics. For more information, see the Introduction to Confluent-Kafka-JavaScript. For migrating existing code, see the KafkaJS Migration Guide.

January 12, 2024

• Terraform support for Flink SQL statements is now available. Refer to this tutorial for a complete end-to-end CI/CD example of deploying a Flink SQL statement on Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink.
• Flink is now available in preview in Azure (eastus, eastus2, westeurope, southeastasia, westus2) and 4 additional AWS regions (us-west-2, ap-southeast-1, eu-west-2, ap-southeast-2).
• Several Flink metrics are now available to query directly via the Metrics API, Confluent Cloud Console, and Datadog.

January 10, 2024

The connection count guideline for Dedicated Kafka clusters has been raised from 12,000 per CKU to 18,000 per CKU. For more information, see Limits per CKU and Dimensions with a recommended guideline.

2023 Releases

December 15, 2023

• Networking-related commands are now available in the Confluent Cloud CLI. Refer to the topics under Manage Networking on Confluent Cloud for the CLI commands to perform specific networking tasks.
• Fully-managed Snowflake Sink connector version 2.1.2 is now available. Version 2.1.2 supports Snowflake schematization (snowflake.enable.schematization). When set to TRUE the connector provides schema detection and evolution when using Snowpipe Streaming for Kafka.

December 14, 2023

Self-managed encryption keys on Azure now include support for FIPS 140-2 Level 2 compliance on Confluent Cloud Dedicated clusters when using HSM-protected keys with Azure Key Vault.

December 13, 2023

Service quota on RBAC role bindings for a Schema Registry cluster updated:

• Schema Registry cluster scope added, with the RBAC role bindings quota for each Schema Registry cluster now independent of the “organizations + environments” RBAC role bindings quota.
• RBAC role bindings now enforced per Schema Registry cluster with default quota of 5000.

December 6, 2023

IP Filtering is available for production use in Limited Availability. Use IP Filtering to enhance the security of your Confluent Cloud resources by restricting access to trusted network locations. This extra layer of access control protects against compromised credentials being used to manage Confluent Cloud from unauthorized IP addresses. To get access before General Availability, contact Confluent Support.

December 4, 2023

Just-in-time (JIT) user provisioning and group mapping are promoted to General Availability. JIT user provisioning automatically creates Confluent Cloud user accounts, then uses group mapping to grant Confluent Cloud RBAC permissions based on group memberships in your SSO identity provider.

December 1, 2023

• You can now create custom connectors in any AWS region supported by Confluent Cloud.
• Confluent Cloud Console topic message search improvements. Use message browser to view messages from all partitions, even if you are not actively producing to a given partition. For more information, see Use Message Browser in Confluent Cloud.

November 17, 2023

The fully-managed BigQuery Sink V2 connector is available for your Apache Kafka® clusters on Google Cloud. The connector supports the Google Cloud BigQuery Storage Write API for data ingestion. Using the BigQuery Storage Write API may provide a cost-benefit for your BigQuery project. For more information, see Google BigQuery Sink V2 Connector for Confluent Cloud.

October 12, 2023

Enterprise clusters are now available in the ap-south-1 (Mumbai) region in AWS.

October 6, 2023

• The new resource metadata access option is generally available.

  The resource metadata access option enables you to connect to the Kafka clusters with private networking to view resources. Without the need to set up a proxy or reverse SSH channel, the following features are enabled when you turn on the option in your private network:

  • Topics metadata views, specifically names, and configuration
  • Stream Lineage
  • Metrics and consumer lag information for topics

  You can toggle the option at the cluster level or at the organization level as the OrganizationAdmin role.

  For details, see Enable or disable the Resource metadata access option.

September 26, 2023

A new Kafka cluster type, Enterprise, is generally available on AWS. Enterprise clusters are designed for production-ready functionality that requires private endpoint networking capabilities.

Enterprise clusters are available over AWS PrivateLink connections in the following regions in AWS, with rollouts to additional regions shortly following:

• us-east-1 (N. Virginia)
• us-east-2 (Ohio)
• us-west-2 (Oregon)
• eu-west-1 (Ireland)
• eu-central-1 (Frankfurt)
• ap-southeast-2 (Sydney)
• ap-southeast-1 (Singapore)
• af-south-1 (Cape Town)

For details about the Enterprise cluster, see Enterprise clusters.

Flink SQL is available for Open Preview. For more information, see Stream Processing with Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink.

September 11, 2023

• Auditable event methods for custom connector plugins is promoted to General Availability. The auditable event methods track operations on custom connector plugins used with custom connectors.

September 8, 2023

• Support for /27 CIDR blocks in AWS Transit Gateway Confluent Cloud networks is in Limited Availability to a subset of Confluent customers.

  You can create Confluent Cloud networks with AWS Transit Gateway in the Confluent Cloud console, REST API, or Confluent Terraform Provider. To learn more, see the Select CIDR blocks and block size section in Create Confluent Cloud Network on AWS.

August 1, 2023

• Two new RBAC roles, AccountAdmin and ResourceKeyAdmin, are promoted to General Availability.
  • AccountAdmin - Manage user and service accounts across the organization.
  • ResourceKeyAdmin - Manage API keys for resources (Kafka, Schema Registry, and ksqlDB) across the organization. No Cloud API key management.
• Just-in-time (JIT) user provisioning automatically creates Confluent Cloud user accounts, then uses group mapping to grant Confluent Cloud RBAC permissions based on group memberships in your SSO identity provider. Both features are now available for Early Access. To be considered for access before General Availability, contact Confluent Support.

July 27, 2023

• Use OAuth to authenticate a cluster link with source Confluent Cloud, Confluent Platform, or Apache Kafka® clusters, as described under OAuth in the Cluster Linking documentation.

July 14, 2023

• Use the Custom Connector Logs UI to view detailed log messages for custom connectors. To learn more, see View from logs tab.
• Cluster links can now be created in bidirectional mode for Disaster Recovery. To learn more, see Bidirectional mode in the Confluent Cloud Cluster Linking configuration documentation.
• Cluster Linking mirror topics can now begin replication from the latest message, thereby leaving behind historical events, or from a specific timestamp using the cluster link configuration mirror.start.offset.spec. To learn more, see mirror.start.offset.spec.

July 12, 2023

Use the Confluent Security Token Service (Confluent STS) to provide trusted users or services with temporary security credentials that can access Confluent Cloud resources without requiring them to have a Confluent Cloud account. Documentation is now available at Use Confluent Security Token Service (STS) tokens on Confluent Cloud.

July 7, 2023

Two new RBAC roles, AccountAdmin and ResourceKeyAdmin, are now in Limited Availability to a subset of Confluent customers.

• AccountAdmin - Manage user and service accounts across the organization.
• ResourceKeyAdmin - Manage API keys for resources (Kafka, Schema Registry, and ksqlDB) across the organization. No Cloud API key management.

To be considered for access before General Availability, contact Confluent Support.

June 22, 2023

Cluster Linking is now available between Private Confluent Cloud Dedicated clusters in AWS PrivateLink.

To learn more, see Cluster Linking between AWS PrivateLink Confluent Cloud clusters.

June 22, 2023

ksqlDB 0.29.0 is now available in Confluent Cloud.

• New functions: LOG, POWER, CBRT, TRUNC, CORRELATION
• UDAFs with multiple/variadic args and support for four- and five-column arguments to UDAFs
• Variadic TOPK that can select other columns
• Improved syntax error messages
• Support for JSON arrays

June 5, 2023

The managed Snowflake Sink connector with support for the Snowpipe Streaming API is available for public preview. For more information, see Snowflake Sink Connector for Confluent Cloud.

May 16, 2023

The managed AlloyDB Sink connector is available for your Kafka clusters on Google Cloud. The AlloyDB Sink connector is a fully-managed PostgreSQL-compatible database service. For more information, see AlloyDB Sink Connector for Confluent Cloud.

May 12, 2023

Custom Connector support is available in Confluent Cloud for certain AWS regions. Custom Connectors offer a fully-managed Connect infrastructure service in Confluent Cloud. Users can upload a Kafka Connect-based plugin to Confluent Cloud and create connectors based on that plugin. While customers manage the connectors, Confluent manages the underlying Connect infrastructure in Confluent Cloud.

May 10, 2023

Stream Sharing is now GA. Use Stream Sharing to exchange data between multiple organizations at the topic level. For more information, see Share Data with Stream Sharing from Confluent Cloud.

April 28, 2023

Costs API is now GA. Use the Cost API to access your costs for a specific range of dates. For more information, see View or download invoices.

April 27, 2023

Cluster Linking is now available from any Private Confluent Cloud Dedicated cluster to a Public-Dedicated Confluent Cloud cluster. To learn more, see Private to public Cluster Linking.

April 24, 2023

Single Sign-on (SSO) adds support for SAML metadata files. You can now upload a SAML metadata file obtained from your identity provider to quickly enable SSO or update settings while eliminating the risks of manual entry. For more information, see Use the SAML metadata file for SSO configuration.

April 21, 2023

The Cluster Linking metric io.confluent.kafka.server/cluster_active_link_count, which indicates the number of active links on a cluster, is DEPRECATED and will be removed in a future release. To learn more, see Monitor Metrics for Cluster Linking on Confluent Cloud.

April 12, 2023

Audit log support for Notifications Service is now generally available. The auditable event methods track operations on notification types, integrations, and subscriptions. To learn more, see Notifications Service Auditable Event Methods on Confluent Cloud.

April 3, 2023

Error reporting is available for the Google Cloud BigQuery Sink (Legacy) Connector for Confluent Cloud. For additional details, see KIP-610.

March 31, 2023

Support for /27 CIDR blocks in VPC Peering Confluent Cloud networks on AWS is a fully supported offering in Limited Availability to a subset of Confluent customers. To learn more, see the Select CIDR blocks and block size section in Create Confluent Cloud Network on AWS.

March 29, 2023

Support for Resource ID (resourceId) in access control lists (ACLs) is currently rolling out to Confluent Cloud organizations. The non-breaking changes enable resource IDs (resourceId) for Kafka ACLs in Confluent Cloud. For more information, see ACL operation details.

March 27, 2023

Authentication protections have been added to Confluent Cloud to prevent unauthorized access to local user accounts. For more information, see Security Protections for Authentication on Confluent Cloud.

March 24, 2023

OAuth authentication support for Confluent Cloud APIs is promoted to General Availability (GA). This release includes the following enhancements:

• Support for OAuth on APIs for managing Confluent Cloud (an authentication alternative to Cloud API keys)
• Introduction of a new Secure Token Service (STS) that enables exchanging a third-party token for a Confluent STS token.

To learn more, see Authentication in the Confluent Cloud APIs documentation.

March 10, 2023

Audit log support for authentication and authorization of Schema Registry and Stream Catalog actions are now available. To learn more, see Schema Registry Authentication and Authorization Auditable Event Methods on Confluent Cloud.

March 9, 2023

Static egress IP addresses for Azure are generally available (GA). Static egress IP addresses are now supported on all three major cloud platforms. Static egress IP addresses are public IP addresses associated with Confluent Cloud that are used to communicate with external resources (such as data sources and sinks for managed connectors) over the public internet. To learn more, see Use Public Egress IP Addresses on Confluent Cloud for Connectors and Cluster Linking and Public Egress IP Addresses for Confluent Cloud Connectors.

February 28, 2023

Private DNS resolution is promoted to General Availability for:

• Azure Private Link
• Google Cloud Private Service Connect

Enable private DNS resolution to fully resolve Confluent endpoints within your private DNS zone without requiring external resolution to the Confluent Global DNS Resolver (GLB).

February 24, 2023

Keys (byok/v1) API is available in Open Preview for Confluent Cloud on AWS and Azure. Use the Keys API to include self-managed encryption keys (aka BYOK) as part of your cluster creation workflow (including the ability to build policy profiles).

---

Confluent Cloud Console now uses the Kafka REST API and the Metrics API instead of the legacy API. While most of Confluent Cloud remains unchanged, Consumer Lag in Cloud Console will no longer display offset information, instead focusing only on the lag to make it more actionable for developers and operators. This change rolls out across organizations over the next few weeks.

February 23, 2023

Self-managed Encryption Keys for Azure support is promoted to General Availability (GA). You can now use your own encryption keys in Azure Key Vault to encrypt data at rest on Confluent Cloud Dedicated Clusters in Azure.

February 15, 2023

Stream Catalog RBAC is now General Available (GA). As part of this, we have released two new roles DataSteward and DataDiscovery which allow management of access to metadata associated with entities such as topics and schemas. As RBAC will be enforced on the ability to attach tags, business metadata, and searching using Stream Catalog APIs, cluster and resource level roles such as CloudClusterAdmin, Operator (Resource level), ResourceOwner, DeveloperRead and DeveloperWrite roles will not be allowed to attach tags, business metadata and search using via UI or Stream Catalog APIs.

January 30, 2023

Private DNS resolution for AWS PrivateLink is promoted to General Availability. You can fully resolve Confluent endpoints within your private DNS zone without requiring external resolution to the Confluent Global DNS Resolver (GLB).

January 27, 2023

Stream Designer now enables users and organizations to easily manage the entire lifecycle of pipelines by using the Confluent CLI and the Pipelines REST API.

To learn more, see the following sections:

• Manage Pipelines With the CLI for Stream Designer on Confluent Cloud
• Manage Pipelines With the REST API for Stream Designer on Confluent Cloud

2022 Releases

December 19, 2022

OAuth for Confluent Cloud is now extended to support:

• OAuth for Schema Registry clients
• Manual refresh of JWKS URI
• Stream Governance APIs, including:
  • OAuth for Schema Registry API
  • OAuth for Stream Catalog API

December 16, 2022

OAuth for Kafka REST APIs is now promoted to General Availability (GA). You can now authenticate using an OAuth/OIDC identity provider to access Kafka REST APIs. To learn more, see Access Kafka REST APIs with an OAuth-OIDC identity provider on Confluent Cloud.

---

Cluster Linking between two AWS Transit Gateway Confluent Cloud clusters in different regions is now promoted to General Availability (GA). You can peer AWS Transit Gateways to create connectivity and use Cluster Linking for fully-managed multi-region replication. To learn more, see Cluster Linking between AWS Transit Gateway attached Confluent Cloud clusters.

December 13, 2022

OAuth for Kafka is now promoted to General Availability (GA). Create OAuth/OIDC identity providers and use Confluent OAuth with Kafka clients.

December 9, 2022

• Confluent Cloud now supports role-based access control (RBAC) for Schema Registry and Schema Linking. To learn more, see the following sections:
  • Access control (RBAC) for Confluent Cloud Schema Registry
  • Access control (RBAC) for Schema Linking
  • RBAC by component
• Cloud Client Quotas are now promoted to General Availability (GA) for Confluent Cloud Dedicated Clusters. Create Client Quotas using the Confluent Cloud Console, REST API, or Confluent Terraform Provider.

December 8, 2022

Self-service AWS Transit Gateway is now promoted to General Availability (GA) for Confluent Cloud networks using the Confluent Cloud Console, REST API, or Confluent Terraform Provider.

December 7, 2022

Service quotas for RBAC role bindings have been added or updated to enable increases in quotas:

• Organization scope: RBAC role bindings (organization plus environments)
• Environment scope: RBAC role bindings (organization plus environments)
• Kafka cluster scope: RBAC role bindings

---

Audit log support for role-based access control (RBAC) operations and action are now available. To learn more, see Audit log support for |rbac-long|.

December 6, 2022

As a feature of , the Confluent CLI AsyncAPI tool adds the ability to Use AsyncAPI to Describe Topics and Schemas on Confluent Cloud Clusters.

November 28, 2022

Support for business and topic metadata is available in the Confluent Cloud Console and REST API. To learn more, see these topics:

• Business metadata
• Example: Apply business metadata to a topic
• Business metadata API examples

November 17, 2022

Support for the following auditable event methods have been added to Confluent Cloud audit logs:

• Kafka cluster management
• OAuth/OIDC identity provider and identity pool

November 4, 2022

To make the ksqlDB editor more accessible, you can press Alt+Tab in the editor window to create a tab on a Mac.

October 11, 2022

The Message Browser now supports Avro messages deserialization.

To learn more about schema formats, see Formats, Serializers, and Deserializers.

October 3, 2022

• Promoted to General Availability (GA):
  • Confluent Stream Designer, a high-productivity, easy to use, visual designer for building, testing, running, and monitoring data pipelines.
  • Pipeline auditable events for Stream Designer, include the actions, or operations, on a data pipeline that generate auditable event messages when using Stream Designer.
• Cluster Linking for Transit Gateway clusters launched in Limited Availability.
• Notifications for account, billing, and service events can now be managed using a REST API in addition to the Cloud Console. You can integrate Microsoft Teams, Slack, a generic webhook or email for notifications using the API, and create new notification subscriptions. For more information, see Notifications for Confluent Cloud.

September 29, 2022

REST APIs for Invitation are promoted to General Availability:

• Provides programmatic management of user invitation operations, including creating, listing, describing, and deleting Invitations.

August 31, 2022

Google Cloud Private Service Connect for Dedicated clusters on Confluent Cloud is promoted to General Availability.

August 11, 2022

OAuth for Confluent Cloud is a fully supported offering in Limited Availability to a subset of Confluent Cloud customers.

August 2, 2022

ksqlDB 0.28.2 is now available in Confluent Cloud.

• Enable the new EMIT FINAL implementation.
• Support pausing and resuming persistent queries.
• Add additional UDFs for trigonometry.

July 21, 2022

ksqlDB 0.27.1 is now available in Confluent Cloud.

• Handle multi-schema Protobuf/Avro topics.
• Add ASSERT SCHEMA and ASSERT TOPIC statements to assert the existence of resources.
• Add PROTOBUF_NOSR format for Protobuf messages without Schema Registry.
• Enable aggregation without a GROUP BY clause.
• Improve null handling.

July 15, 2022

Google Cloud Private Service Connect for Dedicated clusters on Confluent Cloud is available in an Early Access Program to a limited set of early adopters.

June 30, 2022

Cluster Linking now supports adding a prefix to the names of mirror topics. To learn more, see, Prefixing Mirror Topics and Consumer Group Names.

Confluent Terraform Provider v1.0.0 is now generally available.

View the full changelog on Github.

June 28, 2022

Confluent Terraform Provider v0.13.0 is now available in public preview. It contains the following changes:

• Added support for the kafka_api_key, kafka_api_secret, kafka_rest_endpoint attributes in a provider block to make the rest_endpoint attribute and credentials block optional for confluent_kafka_acl and confluent_kafka_topic resources (#37, #54).
• Added disable_wait_for_ready attribute to disable readiness check for confluent_api_key resource #25, #51).
• Added support for pausing / resuming a connector by adding status attribute for confluent_connector resource.

View the full changelog on Github.

June 27, 2022

Confluent Terraform Provider v0.12.0 is now available in public preview. It contains the following changes:

• Reverted resource versioning changes introduced in 0.11.0. For example, the confluent_environment_v2 resource was renamed to confluent_environment. User feedback on versioned resources made it clear that the pain of manually updating the TF state file outweighs the potential benefits of deprecation flexibility that versioned resources could have provided. In order to avoid forcing users to edit their TF state files (either manually or by running commands like terraform state mv) in the future, TF state migrations will be handled within the Confluent Terraform Provider whenever possible.

Follow Confluent Provider 0.12.0: Upgrade Guide to update your TF state and TF configuration files accordingly. Direct updates from both 0.10.0 and 0.11.0 to 0.12.0 are supported.

June 23, 2022

Added the SignIn event to organization auditable log events. For details, see Sign-in attempt.

June 15, 2022

Confluent Terraform Provider v0.11.0 is now available in public preview. It contains the following changes:

• Renamed all resources and data sources to contain a version postfix that matches their API group version (full list).
• Renamed the http_endpoint attribute to rest_endpoint for the confluent_kafka_cluster, confluent_kafka_topic, confluent_kafka_acl resources and data sources to match the Cluster settings tab in Confluent Cloud Console, where the corresponding attribute is named the REST endpoint.
• Renamed the api_key and api_secret attributes of the provider block to cloud_api_key and cloud_api_secret, respectively.

June 9, 2022

Updated the RBAC limitations about API keys for ksqlDB and Schema Registry clusters.

June 8, 2022

Confluent Terraform Provider v0.10.0 is now available in public preview. It contains the following changes:

• Added new confluent_private_link_access data source.
• Added new confluent_peering data source.
• Added new confluent_role_binding data source.
• Adjusted waiting time for confluent_role_binding resource by to avoid sync issues.
• Added more granular examples: kafka-ops-env-admin-product-team and kafka-ops-kafka-admin-product-team.
• Added client validation for topic name for confluent_kafka_topic.
• Resolved 4 Dependabot alerts.
• Updated SDK for API Key Mgmt API to display more descriptive errors for confluent_api_key.
• Fixed importing error for confluent_connector.
• Fixed provisioning error for confluent_connector (#43).
• Updated docs and examples.

View the full changelog on Github.

May 25, 2022

Confluent Terraform Provider v0.9.0 is now available in public preview. It contains the following changes:

• Added new confluent_network data source (#39).
• Added dns_domain and zonal_subdomains computed attributes for confluent_network resource (#40).
• Decreased the creation time of confluent_role_binding resource by 4.5x (#24).

Bug fixes:

• Fixed provisioning error for confluent_connector resource (#43).

View the full changelog on Github.

May 24, 2022

Notifications for account, billing, and service events can now be managed using the Cloud Console. Additionally, you can integrate Microsoft Teams, Slack, or a generic webhook for notifications using the console. For more information, see Notifications for Confluent Cloud.

May 13, 2022

Confluent Terraform Provider v0.8.0 is now available in public preview. It contains the following changes:

• Added new confluent_connector resource (#6).
• Added new confluent_organization data source (#20).
• Implemented import for confluent_api_key resource (#17).

Bug fixes:

• Updated input validation for confluent_private_link_access and confluent_kafka_cluster resources (#18).
• Fixed minor documentation issues (#15).

View the full changelog on Github.

May 6, 2022

Network service quotas for the following resources have increased:

• Kafka clusters: 10 (previously 5)
• Kafka cluster CKUs: 72 (previously 24)

May 4, 2022

REST APIs for Cloud and Kafka API keys are promoted to General Availability:

• Provides programmatic management of critical API key operations, including creating, listing, describing, updating, and deleting API keys.
• Enables organizations to build end-to-end provisioning flow using the Confluent Terraform Provider or other automation tools.

---

The Operator RBAC role has been updated with the following restrictions:

• No access to ksqlDB clusters and cannot see any information related to the ksqlDB clusters.
• No access to the Schema Registry and cannot see any information related to the Schema Registry.

May 3, 2022

Confluent Terraform Provider v0.7.0 is now available in public preview. It contains the following changes:

• Added new resources and corresponding docs:
  • confluent_api_key (#4, #17, #25, #41, #66)
  • confluent_network (#45)
  • confluent_peering
  • confluent_private_link_access (#45)
• Added new data sources and corresponding docs:
  • confluent_user (#61)
• Completely rewrote the Sample Project guide that references 9 TF sample configurations for end-to-end workflows.
• Updated confluent_kafka_cluster and confluent_environment data sources to accept display_name as an input.
• Improved logging to simplify debugging process:
  • Started using the tflog package: now you can enable detailed logs and use grep and a corresponding “logging key” to find all entries related to a particular resource, for example, grep "environment_id=env-9761j7" log.txt.
  • Revised and structured logging messages to output non-sensitive attributes instead of unreadable references.
• Added support for self-managed encryption keys (also known as bring-your-own-key (BYOK) encryption). They are only available for Dedicated Kafka clusters on AWS and GCP.

Bug fixes:

• Fixed pagination issue for data sources (#54, #68).
• Fixed a bug where you could “successfully” import a non-existent resource (#58).
• Fixed a null pointer exception (#53, #55, #67).
• Added other minor fixes (#57).

Breaking changes:

• All resources and data sources have been renamed in the new Confluent Terraform Provider. The prefix has been changed from confluentcloud to confluent. For example, the confluentcloud_environment resource was updated to confluent_environment. Follow the Confluent Provider 0.7.0: Upgrade Guide to update your TF state file.
• Changed kafka_cluster attribute type from string to block for confluent_kafka_acl and confluent_kafka_topic resources and data sources.
• Made host attribute required for confluent_kafka_acl resource.

View the full changelog on Github.

May 3, 2022

New user session timeouts when using the Confluent Cloud Console are now promoted to General Availability:

• Users remain signed in to the Confluent Cloud Console until no activity is detected for 30 minutes.
• Users remain signed in to the Confluent Cloud Console for a maximum of eight hours without refreshing user credentials. Users must sign in at least once every eight hours.

For details, see What user session timeouts does Cloud Console require?.

April 28, 2022

ksqlDB 0.26.0 is now available in Confluent Cloud.

• Add support for Stream-to-Stream and Table-to-Table right joins.
• MIN/MAX aggregates can now be used for Time/TS/Date types.

April 28, 2022

REST APIs for Dedicated clusters and private networking are now Generally Available, and include the following features:

• Adds REST APIs for:
  • Networks (networking/v1).
  • Clusters (cmk/v2). for Dedicated clusters in private networks.
• Adds Confluent Cloud networks
  • Confluent Cloud networks are now first-class citizens, with independent lifecycle management of private dedicated clusters and networks.
  • Supports self-service provisioning of multiple Dedicated clusters, reducing manual effort and improving network resource utilization. For example, you can reuse /16 CIDR blocks across multiple clusters for VPC peering.
  • Users can select zones for the Confluent Cloud network. A Confluent Cloud network is always multi-zone and all multi-zone clusters in it are added to the same zones.
• Adds NetworkAdmin RBAC role targeting network lifecycle management, enabling the separation of concerns between infrastructure and application development teams in an organization.
• Adds audit log support for network-related auditable events.

April 7, 2022

ksqlDB 0.25.1 is now available in Confluent Cloud.

• Improvements to aggregate functions to support complex types, like structs, arrays, and maps.
• Support for push query continuation tokens in the Java API.
• Better error handling for nested functions.
• In the Java API and migrations tool, support for custom request headers and connector IF NOT EXISTS clauses.

April 1, 2022

The Service Level Agreement (SLA) for Confluent Cloud now specifies a 99.99% uptime SLA for Standard and Dedicated Kafka clusters with Multi-Zone configurations. For details, see Confluent Cloud SLA.

The uptime SLAs for Single-Zone clusters remain the same; 99.5% for Basic and 99.95% for Standard and Dedicated.

March 30, 2022

ksqlDB Connector Management is now available in Confluent Cloud. For more details, see Manage Connectors With ksqlDB on Confluent Cloud.

March 29, 2022

New organization audit log events for management operations are promoted to General Availability. For more details, see Organization Auditable Event Methods on Confluent Cloud.

March 24, 2022

Consumer lag is now available as a metric in the Confluent Cloud Metrics API. For more details see Monitor Kafka Consumer Lag in Confluent Cloud.

March 22, 2022

Granular role-based access control (RBAC) for Kafka resources is promoted to General Availability. For details, see Role-based Access Control (RBAC) on Confluent Cloud.

Highlights:

• Adds roles for DeveloperRead (Read access), DeveloperWrite (Write access), DeveloperManage (Create, Delete, Change configurations), ResourceOwner (full access, including granting permissions) for Kafka resources to enable using RBAC for managing access to topics, consumer groups, and transactionalIDs.
• Adds the Operator role that enables Describe-only access at the Organization, Environment, and Cluster level. For details, see Operator.
• Restrict user and service accounts using RBAC and ACLs.
• User and service accounts can be granted multiple roles.
• Adds the MetricsViewer role that grants access only to metrics for specified user and service accounts. This role cannot access data in Kafka clusters.
• Granular RBAC for Kafka resources is only available in Standard and Dedicated clusters. This functionality is not available on Basic clusters.
  • Note that administrator roles are enforced on Basic clusters as usual.
• Stream Lineage views can be accessed by administrator and operator roles (OrganizationAdmin, EnvironmentAdmin, CloudClusterAdmin, MetricsViewer, and Operator). Developers cannot access.

Gaps:

• User and service accounts with DeveloperRead, DeveloperWrite, DeveloperManage, and ResourceOwner roles on resources within a Kafka cluster can see all of the metrics within that cluster. We are actively working to block this access.
• Any user with access to a resource in a cluster can see all of the consumers and producers of a cluster, regardless of which topic on the cluster the consumer consumes from. Engineering is actively working to block this access.
• Some users might receive email notifications related to Connector create operations, even if they are not directly related to or involved in these operations. If a user receives a notification email message, they cannot access the connector unless they are assigned the required roles. Engineering is working to resolve this issue.

March 9, 2022

Cluster links can now be viewed on the Confluent Cloud Console in your web browser. Log on to Confluent Cloud, navigate to Environments, then click the Cluster links tab (next to Environments on the Home page). To learn more, see Go exploring in the Quick Start Tutorial.

Confluent Cloud Terraform Provider v0.5.0 is now available in public preview. It contains the following changes:

• Added support for Kafka topic configuration updates (#11).
• Added support for display_name input for confluentcloud_environment and confluentcloud_service_account data sources (#42, #46).
• Fixed Provider produced inconsistent result after apply error when creating a lot of Kafka topics (#40).
• Fixed delete operation for confluentcloud_kafka_topic resource to avoid 400 Bad Request: Topic ‘foobar’ is marked for deletion error when recreating a lot of Kafka topics (#50).
• Added support for old environment IDs (#43).

View the full changelog on Github.

February 22, 2022

New metrics to track all bytes sent and received over the network by Confluent Cloud are now available in the Confluent Cloud Metrics API. These metrics have a principal_id label to attribute usage to a user or service account. For more details see Confluent Cloud Metrics.

February 11, 2022

ksqlDB 0.24.0 is now available in Confluent Cloud.

• Expose Kafka message headers to ksqlDB
• Add utility functions for working with JSON data
• Add ability to use an existing Schema Registry schema when creating streams and tables

January 28, 2022

Confluent Cloud Terraform Provider v0.4.0 is now available in public preview. It contains the following changes:

• Added data sources for: confluentcloud_environment, confluentcloud_kafka_cluster, confluentcloud_kafka_topic, and confluentcloud_service_account
• Improved readability of error messages by adding details to them
• Resolved potential HTTP 429 errors by adding automatic retries with exponential backoff for HTTP requests
• Added graceful handling for resources created via Terraform but deleted via Confluent Cloud Console, Confluent CLI, or Confluent Cloud APIs.
• Fixed minor bugs and docs issues.

Breaking Changes:

• Removed friction around manual look-up of IntegerID for Service Accounts by removing the need to use a service_account_int_id TF variable. If you are using the confluentcloud_kafka_acl resource you might see an input validation error after running terraform plan, which can be resolved by following this guide. Updated “Sample project” guide to reflect this change.
• Simplified confluentcloud_role_binding resource creation by adding a new rbac_crn attribute for confluentcloud_kafka_cluster resource. Updated the confluentcloud_role_binding resource examples to reflect this simplified approach.

View the full changelog on Github.

January 19, 2022

ksqlDB now supports 1 CSU and 2 CSU deployments. For more information, see Announcing the Confluent Q1 ‘22 Launch.

January 11, 2022

Confluent Cloud Terraform Provider is now available in public preview. You can manage the following Confluent Cloud resources:

• Environments
• Kafka Clusters
• Kafka Topics
• Kafka ACLs
• RBAC Rolebindings
• Service Accounts

2021 Releases

December 14, 2021

ksqlDB 0.23.1 is now available in Confluent Cloud.

• Add support for TIMESTAMP type in the WITH/TIMESTAMP property
• Enable ROWPARTITION and ROWOFFSET pseudo columns
• Enable GRACE period with new stream-stream joins semantics

November 16, 2021

ksqlDB 0.22.0 is now available in Confluent Cloud.

• Add SOURCE keyword for CREATE STREAM and CREATE TABLE statements
• Improve pull query performance for primary key range scans
• Improve push query performance

October 7, 2021

For Dedicated clusters:

• New Cluster Shrink capabilities and the related Cluster Load metric are being incrementally released to customers using Dedicated Kafka clusters starting today. The roll out is gradual to help ensure a consistent experience across cloud providers and regions.

  These features are expected to be available for all customers using Dedicated clusters by mid-November. For more information on using the Cluster Load metric, see Dedicated Cluster Performance and Expansion in Confluent Cloud.

September 16, 2021

ksqlDB 0.21.0 is now available in Confluent Cloud.

• Support for expressions in foreign-key table-table joins
• BYTES data type to represent byte arrays
• ARRAY_CONCAT function added

September 14, 2021

Stream Governance is now available on Confluent Cloud including:

• Stream Catalog on Confluent Cloud: User Guide to Manage Tags and Metadata
• Track Data with Stream Lineage on Confluent Cloud
• Stream quality

Schema Linking is introduced in preview.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Azure Cognitive Search Sink GA

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters on Azure. For more information, see Azure Cognitive Search Sink Connector for Confluent Cloud.

September 9, 2021

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Azure Synapse Analytics Search Sink GA

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters on Azure. For more information, see Azure Synapse Analytics Sink Connector for Confluent Cloud.

September 8, 2021

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Salesforce Platform Events Sink GA

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. For more information, see Salesforce Platform Event Sink Connector for Confluent Cloud.

September 7, 2021

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Salesforce SObject Sink GA

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. For more information, see Salesforce SObject Sink Connector for Confluent Cloud.

August 17, 2021

Multi-tenant cluster provisioning APIs, Admin REST APIs for Apache Kafka®, and Cluster Linking APIs are Generally Available. For more information, see API Reference Documentation.

ksqlDB Pull Queries are now Generally Available.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Azure Service Bus Source GA

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. For more information, see Azure Service Bus Source Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud ServiceNow Sink GA

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. For more information, see ServiceNow Sink Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud ServiceNow Source GA

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. For more information, see ServiceNow Source Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Infinite Storage is now available on Google Cloud clusters. CKUs are no longer tied to storage on Google Cloud clusters.

Cluster Linking for Confluent Cloud is Generally Available on all dedicated, internet networked clusters across all cloud providers. Note: Cluster Linking REST APIs to create and update cluster links are available on all Dedicated Confluent Cloud clusters with Internet networking created after August 16, 2021. These APIs are being rolled out to all previously created clusters. To request a Dedicated cluster update sooner, send an email to clusterlinking@confluent.io. To learn more, see the Cluster Linking on Confluent Cloud Overview page.

max.message.bytes can now be configured up to 20 MB on dedicated clusters (previously the limit was 8 MB). See the Confluent Cloud Broker and Topic Configuration Settings for more details.

Additionally, check out the August Confluent Cloud blog post to learn about the latest Confluent Cloud features.

August 16, 2021

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Salesforce Platform Events Source GA

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. For more information, see Salesforce Platform Event Source Connector for Confluent Cloud.

August 9, 2021

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Azure Cosmos DB Sink GA

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters on Azure. For more information, see Azure Cosmos DB Sink Connector for Confluent Cloud.

July 28, 2021

Cluster management APIs for Standard and Basic clusters are now available. For more information, see Clusters-(cmkv2).

July 26, 2021

ksqlDB 0.20.0 is now available in Confluent Cloud.

• DATE and TIME SQL types added
• LEAST and GREATEST UDFs added
• DATEADD and DATESUB functions added
• FROM_DAYS and update UNIX_DATE functions added
• PARSE_DATE and FORMAT_DATE functions added
• PARSE_TIME and FORMAT_TIME functions added
• TIMEADD and TIMESUB functions added

July 19, 2021

ksqlDB 0.19.0 is now available in Confluent Cloud.

• Foreign-key joins are now supported.
• NULLIF function added.

July 12, 2021

For customers with at least one Standard or Dedicated Kafka cluster, Audit logs now include authorization event checks that occur in the control plane.

June 10, 2021

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Datadog Metrics Sink GA

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. For more information, see Datadog Metrics Sink for Confluent Cloud.

June 2, 2021

Infinite Storage for Standard and Dedicated clusters on Google Cloud All new and existing Standard and Dedicated clusters on Google Cloud now support Infinite Storage. This means there is no maximum size limit for the amount of data that can be stored on the cluster. There is no price change for clusters with Infinite Storage.

For more information, see Kafka Cluster Types in Confluent Cloud.

May 26, 2021

ksqlDB 0.18.0 is now available in Confluent Cloud.

May 6, 2021

Audit logs are now GA

Authentication events and authorization check events that occur on Standard and Dedicated Kafka cluster types are logged and available for consumption.

Confluent Cloud Cluster Role Based Access Control (RBAC) is now GA

Customers can gate access to management operations at the Organization, Environment, and Cluster level. Existing users and service accounts with Confluent Cloud API keys are granted the OrganizationAdmin role in all existing organizations.

April 26, 2021

ksqlDB 0.17.0 is now available in Confluent Cloud

• Added support for lambda functions
• Added migration tooling for applying changes to running workloads
• Non-aggregate CTAS tables now support pull queries

April 22, 2021

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud MongoDB Atlas Sink GA

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. For more information, see MongoDB Atlas Sink Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud MongoDB Atlas Source GA

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. For more information, see Get Started with the MongoDB Atlas Source Connector for Confluent Cloud.

April 6, 2021

Azure Private Link support for Confluent Cloud Dedicated clusters is now GA

Customers can provision new Confluent Cloud Dedicated clusters with Azure Private Link and establish secure connectivity to Confluent Cloud from their Azure VNet.

For more information, see Confluent Cloud Azure Private Link

Import Routes with VPC Peering to Confluent Cloud Dedicated clusters on Google Cloud (Preview)

Import route option is now supported with VPC Peering to Confluent Cloud Dedicated clusters on Google Cloud to enable connectivity from customer premise through customer VPC and support advanced network topologies to connect to Confluent Cloud.

For more information, see Confluent Cloud VPC Peering on Google Cloud

March 18, 2021

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Microsoft SQL Server Sink (JDBC) GA

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. For more information, see Microsoft SQL Server Sink (JDBC) Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud MySQL Sink (JDBC) GA

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. For more information, see MySQL Sink (JDBC) Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud PostgreSQL Sink (JDBC) GA

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. For more information, see PostgreSQL Sink (JDBC) Connector for Confluent Cloud.

February 24, 2021

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Microsoft SQL Server CDC Source (Debezium) GA

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. For more information, see Microsoft SQL Server CDC Source (Debezium) [Legacy] Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud MySQL CDC Source (Debezium) GA

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. For more information, see MySQL CDC Source (Debezium) [Legacy] Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud PostgreSQL CDC Source (Debezium) GA

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. For more information, see PostgreSQL CDC Source Connector (Debezium) [Legacy] for Confluent Cloud.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Salesforce CDC Source GA

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. For more information, see Salesforce CDC Source Connector for Confluent Cloud.

February 2021

Dedicated clusters are now available for all Confluent Cloud users

Previously, Dedicated clusters were only available for customers who signed up through a cloud provider Marketplace integration, and customers with commits.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud AWS Lambda Sink GA

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters on AWS. For more information, see AWS Lambda Sink Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Metrics API Version 2 is now GA

Version 2 of the Metrics API adds metrics for Kafka Connect, ksqlDB, and Schema Registry. For more information, see Confluent Cloud Metrics.

ksqlDB 0.15.0 is now available in Confluent Cloud

• Array and Struct types can now be used as row keys.
• PARTITION BY now supports partitioning on multiple columns.
• Row keys now support all data formats (e.g., JSON, DELIMITED, etc.)
• This ksqlDB release includes breaking changes. Note that these breaking changes only apply to newly created persistent queries. Existing persistent queries are not affected:
  • Persistent queries that use multiple grouping columns now use a different row key format.
  • Stream-table key-to-key joins on mismatched key formats now result in repartition.

January 28, 2021

Microsoft Azure marketplace enhanced integration is in GA for customers

The change allows customers to use their Azure AD account to login (SSO) to Confluent Cloud, and there’s no need for a separate sign up.

Self-serve provisioning UI and CLI for ksqlDB applications

New self-serve provisioning UI and CLI for ksqlDB apps that enables providing your own API Key. You can specify the access for your ksqlDB application:

• With Global access, you don’t need to configure ACLs at all, and you can begin writing queries immediately.
• With Granular access, you can configure ACLS in the UI.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Azure Functions Sink GA

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters on Azure. For more information, see Azure Functions Sink Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Google Functions Sink GA

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters on Google Cloud. For more information, see Google Cloud Functions Sink (Legacy) Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Manage lifecycle for your fully-managed connectors using an API

You can now manage the lifecycle for your fully-managed connectors by API. For more information, see the Confluent Cloud Connector API docs.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud MongoDB Atlas Source Connector now supports BSON

The fully-managed Confluent Cloud MongoDB Atlas Source Connector now supports BSON as an input message format, along with Avro, JSON, JSON_SR (JSON schema), and Protobuf. The connector also now supports an option to fetch a document change only and an option to fetch a full document when a subset of records is updated. For more information, see Get Started with the MongoDB Atlas Source Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud MongoDB Atlas Sink Connector now supports BSON

The fully-managed Confluent Cloud MongoDB Atlas Sink Connector now supports BSON as an input message format, along with Avro, JSON, JSON_SR (JSON schema), and Protobuf. For more information, see MongoDB Atlas Sink Connector for Confluent Cloud.

2020 Releases

December 16, 2020

ksqlDB version 0.14.0 now available in Confluent Cloud

ksqlDB version 0.14.0 provides more advanced pull query expressions (WHERE k IN (...)), incremental schema evolution (ALTER), variable substitution (${foo}), and more key formats.

December 1, 2020

Infinite Storage for Standard and Dedicated clusters on AWS

All new and existing Standard and Dedicated clusters on AWS now support Infinite Storage. This means there is no maximum size limit for the amount of data that can be stored on the cluster. There is no price change for clusters with Infinite Storage.

For more information, see Kafka Cluster Types in Confluent Cloud.

November 20, 2020

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Elasticsearch Service Sink GA

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters on AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. For more information, see Elasticsearch Service Sink Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 Sink GA

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters on Azure. For more information, see Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 Sink Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Google Cloud Functions Sink Preview

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters on Google Cloud. For more information, see Google Cloud Functions Sink (Legacy) Connector for Confluent Cloud.

October 23, 2020

ksqlDB version 0.13.0 now available in Confluent Cloud

Pull queries are now available as a preview feature for all Confluent Cloud ksqlDB users.

September 28, 2020

ksqlDB version 0.12.0 now available in Confluent Cloud

For more information, see the 0.12.0 changelog.

September 25, 2020

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Amazon Redshift Sink GA

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in AWS. For more information, see Amazon Redshift Sink Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Microsoft SQL Server Source GA

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. For more information, see Microsoft SQL Server Source (JDBC) Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Oracle DB Source GA

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. For more information, see Oracle Database Source (JDBC) Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Snowflake Sink GA

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. For more information, see Oracle Database Source (JDBC) Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Azure Functions Sink Preview

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in AWS. For more information, see Azure Functions Sink Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud MySQL Sink Preview

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. For more information, see MySQL Sink (JDBC) Connector for Confluent Cloud.

September 11, 2020

MySQL Source GA

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. For more information, see MySQL Source (JDBC) Connector for Confluent Cloud.

PostgreSQL Source GA

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. For more information, see PostgreSQL Source (JDBC) Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud AWS Lambda Sink Preview

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in AWS. For more information, see AWS Lambda Sink Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Salesforce CDC Source Preview

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. For more information, see Salesforce CDC Source Connector for Confluent Cloud.

September 3, 2020

Updated Schemas UI + Schema Registry settings

Customers can now see the list of schemas stored in Schema Registry, irrespective of the subject naming strategy applied, on the Schemas section in the Cloud Console. Additionally, Schemas Registry Allowed Usage, Schemas Registry API access, and Schemas Registry compatibility configuration are moved to the Settings section in the Environment the Schema Registry was created.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Microsoft SQL Server Sink Preview

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. For more information, see Microsoft SQL Server Sink (JDBC) Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud PostgreSQL Sink Preview

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. For more information, see PostgreSQL Sink (JDBC) Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud MySQL CDC Source (Debezium) Preview

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. For more information, see MySQL CDC Source (Debezium) [Legacy] Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Microsoft SQL Server CDC Source (Debezium) Preview

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. For more information, see Microsoft SQL Server CDC Source (Debezium) [Legacy] Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud PostgreSQL CDC Source Connector (Debezium) Preview

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. For more information, see PostgreSQL CDC Source Connector (Debezium) [Legacy] for Confluent Cloud.

September 1, 2020

Improvements to Confluent Cloud ksqlDB handling of authorization by using bearer tokens.

August 13, 2020

Early access for Custom Dedicated Cluster settings

You can now modify the following Dedicated cluster settings in this limited Early Access: auto topic creation, allowed cipher suites, and default topic partitions and retention. For more information, see Change cluster settings for Dedicated clusters.

August 3, 2020

Azure VPC Peering self-serve provisioning via the Confluent Cloud Console

Customers with annual commitments on usage-based billing plans can now provision new dedicated clusters on Azure with VPC Peering. For more information, see Use VNet Peering Connections with Confluent Cloud on Azure.

ksqlDB version 0.11.0 now available in Confluent Cloud.

For more information, see the 0.11.0 changelog.

July 31, 2020

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Datagen Source GA

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. For more information, see Datagen Source Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Feature enhancements for Fully-managed connectors

• Protobuf and JSON Schema support for Confluent Cloud connectors.
• Compression support for the Amazon S3 sink connector. For more information, see Amazon S3 Sink Connector for Confluent Cloud.

July 15, 2020

AWS Marketplace Commits and Pay-as-you-go

Amazon Web Services customers can now sign up for a self-serve Pay-as-you-go account or Confluent Cloud annual commitments through the AWS Marketplace. With Confluent Cloud annual commitments you can use your AWS commit towards usage-based consumption of Confluent Cloud. For more information, see:

• Get Started with Confluent Cloud on the AWS Marketplace with Pay As You Go
• Get Started with Confluent Cloud on the AWS Marketplace with Commitments

July 14, 2020

Support for Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) on AWS dedicated clusters

• New dedicated clusters only.
• Supports AWS Key Management Service (KMS) only.
• Support for automatic key rotation. No support for manual key rotation.

For more information, see Protect Data at Rest Using Self-managed Encryption Keys on Confluent Cloud.

June 25, 2020

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Azure Event Hubs Source GA

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. For more information, see Azure Event Hubs Source Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Snowflake Sink Preview

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. For more information, see Snowflake Sink Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Elasticsearch Sink Preview

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. For more information, see Elasticsearch Service Sink Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Amazon S3 Sink Improvements

Additional properties to support building a time-based directory structure for data stored in S3. For more information, see Amazon S3 Sink Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Hard-delete schemas in Schema Registry

The Schema Registry API now supports permanent schema deletes with ?permanent=true on the HTTP DELETE call.

Support for schema references for Avro and JSON Schema in Schema Registry

Avro and JSON Schema can now make references to external schemas and evolve those independently (Protobuf already supports references). Schema references are a means of modularizing a schema and its dependencies.

Functionality from ksqlDB 0.9.0 and 0.10.0 is now available in Confluent Cloud

• Support for multi-way joins.
• New syntax for specifying row keys.
• Many new builtin functions.

June 18, 2020

Annual Commitment Users on Google Cloud Can Provision Dedicated Clusters with VPC Peering

Customers with annual commitments on usage-based billing plans can now provision new dedicated clusters on Google Cloud with VPC Peering through the Cloud Console. For more information, see Use VPC Peering Connections with Confluent Cloud on Google Cloud.

June 10, 2020

Data flow

Data flow is now GA. This feature provides a visual representation of the data flow paths (edges) between producers, topics, and consumers within a cluster.

Google Cloud Marketplace Commits

Google Cloud customers can now sign up for Confluent Cloud annual commitments using the Google Cloud marketplace and utilize their Google Cloud commit towards usage-based consumption of Confluent Cloud. For more information, see Get Started with Confluent Cloud on the Google Cloud Marketplace with Commitments.

June 5, 2020

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Kinesis Source GA

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in AWS. For more information, see Amazon Kinesis Source Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Annual Commitment Users on AWS Can Provision Dedicated Clusters with VPC Peering

Customers with annual commitments on usage-based billing plans can now provision new dedicated clusters on Amazon Web Services with VPC Peering through the Cloud Console. For more information, see Use VPC Peering Connections with Confluent Cloud on AWS.

May 27, 2020

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Google BigQuery Sink GA

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in Google Cloud. For more information, see Google Cloud BigQuery Sink (Legacy) Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Google Cloud Pub/Sub Source GA

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. For more information, see Google Cloud Pub/Sub Source Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud MongoDB Source Preview

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. For more information, see Get Started with the MongoDB Atlas Source Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud MongoDB Sink Preview

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. For more information, see MongoDB Atlas Sink Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Confluent Cloud Metrics API

Confluent Cloud Metrics API now serves metrics for records sent and received for clusters, topics, and partitions along with cluster level partition count. For more information, see Confluent Cloud Metrics.

May 14, 2020

Cluster Level Metrics in the Cloud Console

View your time-series graphs of your Apache Kafka® cluster usage. This includes your ingress, egress, storage, and partition count to allow you to monitor your usage over time.

Annual Commitment Users Can Expand Dedicated Clusters

Customers with annual commitments on usage-based billing plans can now expand their dedicated clusters through the Cloud Console. For more information, see Expand a Dedicated Kafka Cluster.

April 23, 2020

Usage-based billing with commits

Usage-based billing with commits is now available for customers on the Azure Marketplace. You can now commit a spend, get a discount, and transact through the Azure Marketplace to get started with Confluent Cloud. For more information, see Get Started with Confluent Cloud on the Azure Marketplace with Commitments.

Support for Protocol Buffers and JSON Schema in Confluent Cloud

Support for Protocol Buffers and JSON Schema has been added in Schema Registry and throughout Confluent Cloud, including ksqlDB, Kafka Streams and Kafka Clients. For more information, see Avro, JSON, and Protobuf Supported Formats and Extensibility.

Confluent Cloud CLI General Availability

The Confluent Cloud CLI has been promoted to general availability with features that now enable use in a scripted environment:

• Machine readable JSON or YAML output through the -o flag on commands with return values.
• Long-lived authentication through ccloud login --save.

For more information, see Confluent Cloud command reference.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Google Cloud Spanner Sink Preview

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in Google Cloud. For more information, see Google Cloud Spanner Sink Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Google Cloud Dataproc Sink Preview

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in Google Cloud. For more information, see Google Cloud Dataproc Sink Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Azure Event Hubs Source Preview

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. For more information, see Azure Event Hubs Source Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 Sink Preview

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in Microsoft Azure. For more information, see Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 Sink Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Amazon Redshift Sink Preview

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in Amazon Web Services. For more information, see Amazon Redshift Sink Connector for Confluent Cloud.

April 6, 2020

Confluent Cloud Cluster Tiers: Basic, Standard, Dedicated

Confluent Cloud now offers three cluster tiers: Basic, Standard, and Dedicated.

• Basic clusters are billed for ingress, egress, and storage.
• Standard clusters are billed an hourly base price of $1.50 USD per hour, in addition to usage-based charges.
• Dedicated clusters are available for customers with annual commitments, which you can purchase from Confluent. Existing standard clusters will remain unchanged through March 31, 2021, after which any existing single-zone clusters will be migrated to basic, and multi-zone clusters will be migrated to standard.

For more information, see Kafka Cluster Types in Confluent Cloud.

Annual Commitment Users Can Provision Dedicated Clusters

Customers with annual commitments on usage-based billing plans can now provision new dedicated clusters with internet endpoints through the Confluent Cloud Console. For more information, see Kafka Cluster Types in Confluent Cloud.

Confluent Cloud ksqlDB Production Availability

Confluent Cloud ksqlDB is now production available for all users on usage-based billing plans.

March 31, 2020

Confluent Cloud Metrics API GA

The Confluent Cloud Metrics API is now GA with new metrics for connection counts and request rates. It is enabled for all newly provisioned clusters and is rolling out to existing clusters in AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure at this time. For more information, see Confluent Cloud Metrics.

Confluent Cloud Azure Blob Storage Sink GA

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Azure Blob Storage Sink is now GA. For more information, see Azure Blob Storage Sink Connector for Confluent Cloud.

February 18, 2020

Consumption-based Self-serve Confluent Cloud on the Azure Marketplace

With this release, you can now find consumption-based self-serve Confluent Cloud offering on the Azure Marketplace. You can sign up to use Confluent Cloud by utilizing your Azure spend. For more information, see Get Started with Confluent Cloud on the Azure Marketplace with Pay As You Go and the blog post.

January 24, 2020

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Oracle Database Source Preview

This feature is launched for your Apache Kafka® clusters in Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. For more information, see Oracle Database Source (JDBC) Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Microsoft SQL Server Source Preview

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure. For more information, see Microsoft SQL Server Source (JDBC) Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Google Cloud Pub/Sub Source Preview

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure. For more information, see Google Cloud Pub/Sub Source Connector for Confluent Cloud.

January 2, 2020

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud GCS Connector (Sink) GA

For more information, see Google Cloud Storage Sink Connector for Confluent Cloud.

2019 Releases

December 20, 2019

SAML/SSO Production Availability

• This feature enables customers to utilize their Identity provider to centrally manage user login information.
• This feature supports all the Identity Providers with SAML 2.0 including: Okta, Ping, OneLogin, Microsoft Active Directory
• This feature is available on AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure.
• For more information, see the documentation.

Confluent Cloud Metrics API Preview

This feature is available for Apache Kafka® clusters in AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure. For more information, see Confluent Cloud Metrics.

December 12, 2019

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud PostgreSQL Source Preview

This feature is launched for your Apache Kafka® clusters in AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure. For more information, see PostgreSQL Source (JDBC) Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud MySQL Source Preview

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure. For more information, see MySQL Source (JDBC) Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Kinesis Source Preview

This feature is launched for your Kafka clusters in AWS. For more information, see Amazon Kinesis Source Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Other improvements

• The Kafka cluster ID is now shown in the Cluster Settings page. This makes it easier for you to connect clients to your clusters.
• The Clients tab in CLI & Client Configuration page now shows client configurations for 12 different clients, with links to example code for each type of client.

November 15, 2019

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Google BigQuery Connector (Sink) Preview

For more information, see Google Cloud BigQuery Sink (Legacy) Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Connector improvements

• Avro format support has been added to Confluent Cloud Google Cloud Storage Connector and Azure Blob Storage Connector.
• You can increase connect tasks to get a better performance and handle more partitions.

Support plan update

• Support plan downgrades now have certain restrictions in place. When you purchase a support plan, you will retain the support plan and be charged for it for the current and potentially next billing cycle. For more information, see Support
• A Confluent Community self-serve offering is now available from the Google Cloud marketplace. Google Cloud customers can now use their Google Cloud committed expenditure for Confluent Cloud standard clusters. See the Google Cloud Marketplace offering for details.

October 31, 2019

Higher availability with multi-zone clusters

You can now choose between single or multiple availability zones when creating new Confluent Cloud clusters. If you select multiple availability zones, data in the cluster will be spread across multiple cloud availability zones. This provides higher availability in the case of a zonal outage. Prices may differ between single and multiple availability zone configurations. For more details about cloud provider availability zones:

• AWS: https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure/regions_az/#Availability_Zones
• Google Cloud: https://cloud.google.com/docs/geography-and-regions
• Azure: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/availability-zones/az-overview

Use all UI features with VPC-peered clusters

You can now use the Confluent Cloud Console for ksqlDB stream processing, topic management, and consumer lag monitoring on VPC peered clusters. You must configure your network to route and proxy the necessary requests between the UI and your cluster. For more details about setting this up, see Manage Networking on Confluent Cloud.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Azure Blob Storage Connector (Sink) Preview

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud Azure Blob Storage Connector (Sink) available in Preview. For more information, see Azure Blob Storage Sink Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Use Confluent Cloud in more regions

Confluent Cloud is now available in:

• Azure useast2 (Virginia)
• Google Cloud asia-southeast1 (Singapore)

September 27, 2019

Confluent Cloud Schema Registry General Availability

Now available on Microsoft Azure and in multiple geographical regions (US, Europe, and APAC).

August 30, 2019

Microsoft Azure General Availability

Confluent Cloud is now generally available on Microsoft Azure in:

• Azure southeastasia (Singapore)
• Azure westus2 (Washington)
• Azure westeurope (Netherlands)

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud S3 Connector (Sink) Production Availability.

For more information, see Amazon S3 Sink Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Fully-managed Confluent Cloud GCS Connector (Sink) Preview

For more information, see Google Cloud Storage Sink Connector for Confluent Cloud.

Use Confluent Cloud in more regions

Confluent Cloud is now available in:

• AWS ap-northeast-1 (Tokyo)
• AWS ap-south-1 (Mumbai)
• AWS ap-southeast-1 (Singapore)
• Google Cloud asia-northeast1 (Tokyo)
• Google Cloud asia-southeast1 (Singapore)
• Google Cloud europe-west4 (Netherlands)

August 16, 2019

Support

You can now purchase support for Confluent Cloud through the global menu in the web interface. For plan details and pricing, see Confluent Cloud Support.

Service Level Agreement (SLA)

With this release, the SLA for Confluent Cloud is updated. An uptime SLA is now available for new clusters created in some regions; the SLA is displayed in the cluster creation and cluster details UI if it is available. See Confluent Cloud SLA for details.

Schema Registry

Confluent Cloud Schema Registry is now generally available on Google Cloud (GCP) and in multiple geographical regions (US, Europe, and APAC). To get started, see Quick Start for Schema Management on Confluent Cloud.

August 1, 2019

VPC peering to multiple customer VPCs

You can now peer one Dedicated cluster with up to five VPCs within the same region and cloud provider. This lets you connect applications across multiple networks using Confluent Cloud.

AWS Transit Gateway

You can now link a Dedicated cluster running in AWS to an AWS Transit Gateway. Transit Gateway allows transitive routing and supports a variety of AWS networking services, which makes it possible to connect clients in many networks, both in the cloud and on-premises, to Confluent Cloud.

June 25, 2019

Apache Kafka® 2.3 released.

All Confluent Cloud clusters have been automatically upgraded. For more information, see https://www.apache.org/dist/kafka/2.3.0/RELEASE_NOTES.html.

May 29, 2019

CLI update

The Confluent Cloud CLI now supports ACLs and service accounts.

May 13, 2019

Capacity increase

All Confluent Cloud self-serve clusters can now support peak throughput up to 100 MBps write and 100 MBps read, and can store up to 5 TB of data.

ksqlDB Preview

Fully managed KSQL is available in Preview.

May 7, 2019

S3 Connector Preview

Fully managed AWS S3 Sink Connector is available in Preview.

May 1, 2019

Consumption-based pricing

Confluent Cloud now offers consumption-based pricing.

Name change

Confluent Cloud Professional is now simply called Confluent Cloud. For more information, see https://www.confluent.io/blog/introducing-cloud-native-experience-for-apache-kafka-in-confluent-cloud.

April 5, 2019

Schema edit UI

View and edit schemas in the Topic Management UI.

March 26, 2019

Apache Kafka® 2.2 released.

All Confluent Cloud clusters have been automatically upgraded. For more information, see https://www.apache.org/dist/kafka/2.2.0/RELEASE_NOTES.html.

March 13, 2019

Schema Registry Preview

Schema Registry is now available in Preview.

February 27, 2019

Topic management UI

You can now see the actual topics, configurations, and events on your cluster from the Cloud Console interface. For details, see Manage Topics in Confluent Cloud.

Consumer lag

You can now see how your consumer groups are managing with the traffic on your cluster from the Cloud Console interface. For details, see Monitor Kafka Consumer Lag in Confluent Cloud.

Important

These features are not yet available for customers using VPC peering.

January 22, 2019

UI navigation update

The UI has been updated to show you more information with fewer clicks, and to logically group common actions. Many administrative actions and support links are always available by clicking on your name in the upper-right corner. These options were previously available in the navigation bar and in the cluster management UI. The Quick Start for Confluent Cloud and related documentation is updated to reflect these changes.

Environment overview

Now you can see provisioned capacity and usage data for all your clusters on the new Environment Overview page. Usage data was previously available in a dedicated Activity page for each cluster.

Parameter changes

In the past, Confluent Cloud allowed users to configure a wide range of topic level configuration parameters. However, some of these parameters aren’t necessary when using a fully managed service. Confluent Cloud now ignores these parameters. Existing users should see no change, as it has been verified that these parameters were never used in practice. For consistency, some configuration parameters in the describe topics/configuration APIs are now read-only.