Follower fetching with rack awareness for Kafka Connect and MirrorMaker 2

Follower fetching with rack awareness is now supported for Aiven for Apache Kafka® Connect sink connectors and Aiven for Apache Kafka® MirrorMaker 2 replication flows when enabled on the Aiven for Apache Kafka® service.

Kafka Connect and MirrorMaker 2 automatically use the availability zone where each node runs to prefer reading from in-sync follower replicas in the same zone. This reduces cross-availability zone network traffic and associated costs.

For Kafka Connect, this applies to sink connectors only. For MirrorMaker 2, follower fetching is enabled by default for new replication flows and can be disabled per flow.

Learn more:

• Follower fetching in Aiven for Apache Kafka®
• Configure rack awareness in Aiven for Apache Kafka® MirrorMaker 2