Release Notes for Confluent Platform 7.8

7.8 is a major release of Confluent Platform that provides you with Apache Kafka® 3.8, the latest stable version of Kafka.

The technical details of this release are summarized below.

Kafka brokers

Confluent Server

Confluent Metadata Service (MDS) now supports authentication with mutual TLS certificates when role-based access control (RBAC) is enabled.

Confluent Community / Kafka

Confluent Platform 7.8 features Kafka 3.8.

  • Change Notice: Effective with Confluent Platform 8.0, Confluent Platform, Community version will transition to follow the Kafka release cycle more closely. The Kafka community provides about one year of patch support for a Kafka version, from the minor version release date, and Confluent Community software will soon follow a similar support schedule. Confluent customers using Confluent Enterprise will continue to receive patch updates for three years following minor version release. For more details, see Confluent Platform and Apache Kafka compatibility.

In Confluent Platform 7.8, major features include:

KRaft mode enhancements:

Stability enhancements:

General enhancements:

For a full list of the KIPs, features, and bug fixes, see the Apache Kafka release notes, Kafka 3.8 New Features and Updates on the Confluent blog, or the Kafka 3.8 release video that follows.

Confluent Control Center

  • Added the capability to produce messages with an associated schema in Confluent Control Center. For more information, see Produce new messages to topics.
  • Added topic message search improvements to Confluent Control Center. You can use the message browser to view messages from all partitions, even if you are not actively producing to a given partition. For more information, see View Messages Using Control Center for Confluent Platform.
  • RBAC can be enabled without requiring an identity provider by using mTLS identity for RBAC authorization for Confluent Control Center in Confluent Platform 7.8.

Clients

  • Official Confluent Node.js Client for Kafka is now in Limited Availability. For more information, see Node.js Client (Limited Availability) for Apache Kafka.
  • A Javascript client for use with Schema Registry, OAuth and CSFLE is in early access.
  • Librdkafka and supported clients (Python/Go/.NET) version 2.6.0 release included the following updates:

All clients:

  • KIP-460 Adds admin leader election RPC to the Admin client.
  • KIP-714 Adds complete consumer metrics support and produce latency average and maximum metrics support for non-Java clients for support parity with the Java client.
  • KIP-848 Provides early access to the ListConsumerGroups Admin API, which now has an optional filter to return only groups in a given state.
  • Made a fix for permanent fetch errors when using a newer Fetch RPC version with an older inter broker protocol.

For more information on these KIPs and fixes, see Librdkafka release notes.

Python client only:

  • Added support for Python 3.13 wheels.
  • Added Transactional ID resource type for ACL operations.

For more information about the Python client, see Python Client.

.NET client only:

  • .NET 8 support including the NJsonSchema 11 package.

For more information about the .NET client, see .NET client.

Cluster Management

Confluent for Kubernetes (formerly Confluent Operator)

For Confluent for Kubernetes release notes, see Confluent for Kubernetes Release Notes.

Ansible Playbooks for Confluent Platform

For Ansible Playbooks for Confluent Platform release notes, see the Ansible Playbooks for Confluent Platform.

Confluent CLI

  • Confluent Platform 7.8 ships with Confluent CLI version 4.7.0. Confluent CLI version 4.x has many changes from version 3.x. For a list of changes, see Confluent CLI Release Notes.

Kafka Connect

  • RBAC can be enabled without requiring an identity provider by using mTLS identity for RBAC authorization for Kafka Connect in Confluent Platform 7.8.

Schema Registry

  • RBAC can be enabled without requiring an identity provider by using mTLS identity for RBAC authorization for Schema Registry in Confluent Platform 7.8.

Security

Starting with the Confluent Platform 7.8 release, RBAC can be enabled without requiring an identity provider by using mTLS identity for RBAC authorization. This is generally available now across all Confluent Platform services. It also includes support for mTLS authentication to the Confluent Metadata Service (MDS).

Other improvements and changes

  • Confluent Platform 7.8, Confluent Platform adds support for Ubuntu 22.04 and Alma Linux 8 and 9. For more information, see Operating systems.
  • Confluent Platform docker images now use the Temurin JDK instead of Zulu JDK.

Deprecation warnings

  • Effective with Confluent Platform 8.0, monitoring interceptors will be removed. This means that the “% message consumed” and “end-to-end latency” graphs in Confluent Control Center will no longer be available. Client configurations should be updated to disable these interceptors.
  • Confluent Platform 8.0 will remove support for older client protocol API versions. Specifically, client protocol API versions older than those supported by Apache Kafka 2.1 (released Nov 2018) will be removed. This aligns with Kafka KIP 896, which was implemented in Apache Kafka 3.7, and marked these older versions as deprecated. Any Java clients older than 2.1.0 are generally affected, and any Kafka client version released before 2021 are likely affected. For complete details on the specific client protocol API versions being removed, see KIP 896.

Supported versions and interoperability

For the supported versions and interoperability of Confluent Platform and its components, see Supported Versions and Interoperability for Confluent Platform.

How to download

Confluent Platform is available for download at https://confluent.io/download/. See the Install Confluent Platform On-Premises section for detailed information.

Important

The Confluent Platform package includes Confluent Server by default and requires a confluent.license key in your server.properties file. Starting with Confluent Platform 5.4.x, the Confluent Server broker checks for a license during start-up. You must supply a license string in each broker’s properties file using the confluent.license property as below:

confluent.license=LICENCE_STRING_HERE_NO_QUOTES

If you want to use the Kafka broker, download the confluent-community package. The Kafka broker is the default in all Debian or RHEL and CentOS packages.

For more information about migrating to Confluent Server, see Migrate Confluent Platform to Confluent Server.

To upgrade Confluent Platform to a newer version, check the Upgrade Confluent Platform documentation.

Questions?

  • If you have questions regarding this release, feel free to reach out via the community mailing list or community Slack. Confluent customers are encouraged to contact our support directly.
  • To provide feedback on the Confluent documentation, click the Give us feedback button located near the footer of each page.