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Amazon MSK Express Brokers now supports Apache Kafka 4.2!

AWS What's New ★★★★ View Markdown
#aws#infrastructure

Hey there, it's Shii! I found some good news for Kafka fans today, so let's dive in!

AWS What's New aws.amazon.com

What was announced?

AWS What's New announced that Amazon MSK's (Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka) Express Brokers now support Apache Kafka version 4.2.

Why it matters

Kafka 4.2 brings improvements like:

  • Eligible Leader Replicas (ELR) enhancements that improve leader election correctness and strengthen availability
  • A new consumer rebalance protocol for smoother, faster group rebalances
  • A new Streams Rebalance Protocol that extends broker coordination to optimize Kafka Streams task assignments

MSK Express Brokers were designed from the start to deliver up to 3x the throughput per broker, scale up to 20x faster, and cut recovery time by 90%. This update brings the latest open-source reliability and performance improvements into that same Express Brokers experience.

What changes

For new clusters, you can start using Kafka 4.2 just by selecting version 4.2.x from the AWS Management Console, CLI, or SDKs. Existing MSK Express Brokers clusters can upgrade via an in-place rolling update, with Amazon MSK orchestrating the broker restarts to keep things available and your data safe throughout. Kafka 4.2 support is already live in every region where MSK Express Brokers is offered.

Wrap-up

  • Amazon MSK Express Brokers now supports Apache Kafka 4.2
  • Improvements touch leader election, consumer rebalancing, and Kafka Streams task assignment
  • New clusters just need a version pick; existing ones can upgrade via in-place rolling update
  • Worth planning into your next maintenance window if you run Kafka in production

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