What’s New in Redpanda Cloud

You can now create remote read replica topics on a BYOC cluster with the Cloud API. A remote read replica topic is a read-only topic that mirrors a topic on a different cluster. It can serve any consumer, without increasing the load on the source cluster.

Redpanda has increased the number of client connections in all tiers. For example, tier 1 now supports up to 9,000 maximum connections, and tier 9 supports up to 450,000 maximum connections. Connections are regulated per broker for best performance.

The Cloud API allows you to programmatically manage clusters and resources in your Redpanda Cloud organization. For more information, see the Cloud API Quickstart, the Cloud API Overview, and the full Cloud API reference.

mTLS authentication is now available for Kafka API clients. You can enable mTLS for your cluster using the Cloud API.

You can now manage GCP Private Service Connect and AWS PrivateLink connections to your BYOC or Dedicated cluster on the Cluster settings page in Redpanda Cloud. See the steps for PrivateLink and Private Service Connect.

Redpanda now provides single message transforms (SMTs) to help you modify data as it passes through a connector, without needing additional stream processors.

Redpanda Cloud has a simplified navigation, with clusters and networks available at the top level. It now has a global view of all resources in your organization. Namespaces are now called resource groups, although the functionality remains the same.

When you create a BYOC or Dedicated cluster, you select a cloud tier with the expected usage for your cluster, including the maximum ingress, egress, logical partitions, and connections. Redpanda has added tiers 8 and 9 for BYOC clusters, which provide higher supported configurations.

Redpanda Serverless moved out of beta and into limited availability (LA). This means that it has usage limits and no public SLA. During LA, existing clusters can scale to the usage limits, but new clusters may need to wait for availability. Serverless is the fastest and easiest way to start data streaming. It is a production-ready deployment option with automatically-scaling clusters available instantly. To start using Serverless, sign up for a free trial. This is no base cost, and with pay-as-you-go billing after the trial, you only pay for what you consume.

Redpanda Cloud now supports OpenID Connect (OIDC) integration, so administrators can leverage existing identity providers for user authentication to your Redpanda organization with single sign-on (SSO). Redpanda uses OIDC to delegate the authentication process to an external IdP, such as Okta. To enable this for your account, contact Redpanda support.

AWS PrivateLink is now available as an easy and highly secure way to connect to Redpanda Cloud from your VPC. You can set up the PrivateLink endpoint service for a new cluster or an existing cluster. To enable AWS PrivateLink for your account, contact Redpanda support.

When you create a cluster, you select a cloud tier with the expected throughput for your cluster, including the maximum ingress, egress, partitions, and connections. On February 5, Redpanda added tiers 6 and 7 for BYOC clusters, which provide higher throughput limits.

Redpanda Cloud now supports usage-based billing for Dedicated Cloud clusters. Contact Redpanda sales to request a private offer for monthly or annual committed use. You can then use existing Google Cloud Marketplace or AWS Marketplace credits to quickly provision Dedicated Cloud clusters, and you can view your bills and manage your subscription directly in the marketplace.

Redpanda Serverless is a managed streaming service (Kafka API) that completely abstracts users from scaling and operational concerns, and you only pay for what you consume. It’s the fastest and easiest way to start event streaming in the cloud. You can try the beta release of Redpanda Serverless with a free trial.

BYOC clusters on AWS now support ARM-based Graviton2 instances. This lowers VM costs and supports increased partition count.

With the managed connector for Apache Iceberg, you can write data into Iceberg tables. This enables integration with the data lake ecosystem and efficient data management for complex analytics.

In the Redpanda Console UI, you can perform Schema Registry operations, such as registering a schema, creating a new version of it, and configuring compatibility. The Schema Registry page lists verified schemas, including their serialization format and versions. Select an individual schema to see which topics it applies to.

With maintenance windows, you have greater flexibility to plan upgrades to your cluster. By default, Redpanda Cloud upgrades take place on Tuesdays. Optionally, on the Cluster settings page, you can select a window of specific off-hours for your business for Redpanda to apply updates. All times are in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Updates may start at any time during that window.