Aiven supports Apache Kafka^® 3.0

It's been a long two months, but Aiven has now implemented support for Apache Kafka version 3.0.

As this is a new major version, it comes with a number of enhancements across the board, as well as with some deprecations and API changes.

What's new

Group multiple consumer group offset requests

KIP-709: Extend OffsetFetch requests to accept multiple group ids

OffsetFetch API allows grouping multiple consumer group offset requests into a single fetch. This reduces request overhead and simplifies client code.

Strongest delivery guarantee by default

[KIP-679: Producer will enable strongest delivery guarantee by default](https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/KAFKA/KIP-679%3A+Producer+will+enable+the+strongest+delivery+guarantee+by+default)

Producer config defaults are modified to make record delivery guarantees stronger by default. This ensures ordering, avoids duplicates and increases durability. As the modification could cause compatibility issues for some users, it is advised you go through the migration plan outlined in KIP-679.

Identify the liveliness of a topic/partition

KIP-734: Improve AdminClient.listOffsets to return timestamp and offset for the record with the largest timestamp

AdminClient.listOffsets API is extended with the capability to return the offset and timestamp of the record with the highest timestamp in a topic/partition. This allows easy identification if a topic/ partition is alive - being written to - or the health of it.

More granular restarting of connectors

KIP-745: Connect API to restart connector and tasks

Connect API is enhanced with added granularity to support restarting of only the failed connector and its tasks with a single call.

Karapace schema registry for Aiven for Apache Kafka 3.0

The open-source version of Confluent Schema Registry is no longer supported in Apache Kafka 3.0. As a replacement, Aiven provides a lightweight, fast and truly open source tool, Karapace. More information on migrating to Karapace is provided in the Help article End of support for Confluent Schema Registry on Aiven.

Deprecations

The following functionalities are deprecated in Apache Kafka 3.0:

• MirrorMaker v1 is deprecated and will no longer be supported in Apache Kafka v4.0
• Java 8 and Scala 2.12 programming language versions are deprecated and will be removed in v4.0.
• Message formats v0 and v1 are deprecated and will be removed in Apache Kafka 4.0. Start upgrading your client applications to get the best performance.
• IDEMPOTENT_WRITE is deprecated and will be removed in a future release. Update your application to use WRITE instead.

How to get started with Aiven for Apache Kafka 3.0

You can either launch a brand new cluster in the Aiven Console or conduct a no-downtime upgrade to the latest version.

Wrapping up

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