Apr 27, 2021
Aiven supports Apache Kafka® 2.8
Aiven now supports Apache Kafka version 2.8, announced on April 19, 2021. Read on to find out what the new version means for you!
The new Apache Kafka version 2.8, announced on April 19, 2021, comes with a number of enhancements across the board, including a preview of being able to run Kafka without Zookeeper.
Apache Kafka without ZooKeeper
KIP-500: Replace ZooKeeper with a Self-Managed Metadata Quorum
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/KAFKA/KIP-500%3A+Replace+ZooKeeper+with+a+Self-Managed+Metadata+Quorum
Exciting news, removing the ZooKeeper dependency is moving forward, and now it is possible to run Kafka without ZooKeeper. The new consensus based on the RAFT protocol, KRaft, is now available. Note however, that the feature is not production ready yet and should only be used for testing. But it is already showing promising performance improvements.
Exactly Once delivery
KIP-679: Producer will enable the strongest delivery guarantee by default
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/KAFKA/KIP-679%3A+Producer+will+enable+the+strongest+delivery+guarantee+by+default
Starting with the version 2.8, the Kafka producers will now have “exactly once” delivery semantics enabled by default. Transaction producers have been available since version 0.11, and provide much better semantics for application development with a very small performance hit.
Performance improvements
KIP-612: Ability to Limit Connection Creation Rate on Brokers
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/KAFKA/KIP-612%3A+Ability+to+Limit+Connection+Creation+Rate+on+Brokers
Version 2.8 extends the throttling capabilities introduced in 2.7. Now it is possible to throttle the number of connections created per IP, which allows more fine grained control to prevent performance degradation when up-scaling or deploying an application with a high number of nodes.
Improved leader election performance for clusters with thousands of partitions
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/KAFKA-10794
A small bug fix with a large effect. This one liner halved the time to process
some leader election messages.
The list above includes only examples of the most important enhancements in this release. To see the full list please visit: https://archive.apache.org/dist/kafka/2.8.0/RELEASE_NOTES.html
How to get started with Aiven for Apache Kafka 2.8
You can either launch a brand new cluster in the Aiven console or conduct a no-downtime upgrade to the latest version.
Wrapping up
Not using Aiven services yet? Sign up now for your free trial at https://console.aiven.io/signup!
In the meantime, make sure you follow our changelog and blog RSS feeds or our LinkedIn and Twitter accounts to stay up-to-date with product and feature-related news.
Related resources
Aug 9, 2022
On 2022-08-23, Aiven will complete its migration away from Elasticsearch. Read on to find out how this affects the backwards compatibility we were providing.
Nov 8, 2022
In this article, guest blogger Gigi Sayfan explores event-driven programming: its benefits and shortcomings, how it works, and what useful patterns it brings to the table. We’ll also dive into some fun examples.
Oct 31, 2022
The team at Aiven has been busy last quarter with new releases across several of our services. Starting from the announcement of our ClickHouse Beta being available, we have lots of good stuff here. Read on for details about what’s been going on last quarter!