News
What's new in Cassandra" 6? A roundup of features for users and operators
4+ day ago (906+ words) May 14, 2026 | By Mariah Mc Laughlin Apache Cassandra 6 is shaping up to be significant release as some of its biggest changes affect the core behavior of the database: Let's focus on a few changes that stand out: Taken together, these changes…...
When (and when not) to use Apache Kafka" Diskless Topics
4+ day, 36+ min ago (1420+ words) May 14, 2026 | By Paul Brebner I recently wrote a Visual Guide to Apache Kafka Diskless Topics, which introduces the main ideas behind Kafka Diskless Topics and links to the relevant Kafka KIPs. At present, the only accepted KIP is the high-level…...
Say goodbye to Zoo Keeper: A production-ready path to KRaft designed for service continuity at no added cost
1+ week, 36+ min ago (703+ words) May 11, 2026 | By Phil Yang For over a decade, Apache Zoo Keeper was inseparable from Apache Kafka. It coordinated Kafka's distributed metadata'tracking brokers and topics, elected controllers and leaders, and managed cluster configuration. Every Kafka cluster was dependent on a Zoo…...
Tag Management made easy on the Net App Instaclustr Platform
1+ week, 4+ day ago (1058+ words) May 07, 2026 | By Jeremy Giddings At their core, tags are key-value pairs that enable you to categorize and label your clusters in meaningful ways. Think of them as flexible metadata that travels with your resources, providing context that goes far beyond…...
Kafka Sink Connectors explained: Bridging your data pipeline
1+ week, 5+ day ago (754+ words) May 06, 2026 | By Walt Ribeiro A "sink connector" sounds simple'until you realize different systems use the term from different perspectives. In Apache Kafka Connect, a sink connector means data flowing out of Kafka into another system. In Click House, the database…...
Why regular Kafka" client upgrades matter: Lessons from the April 2026 CVEs
2+ week, 36+ min ago (394+ words) May 04, 2026 | By Varun Ghai Keeping Kafka brokers and, just as importantly, Kafka clients up to date is one of the simplest and most effective ways to improve reliability, security, and correctness over time. New Kafka releases routinely include performance improvements,…...
Understanding Open Search" vector field type'Part 2: sparse_vector
3+ week, 37+ min ago (648+ words) April 27, 2026 | By Ramya Ravi In part 1, we explored how knn_vector field type enables semantic search by retrieving results based on meaning rather than exact matches. When building real-world AI applications such as e-commerce search, enterprise search, and conversational systems, you will…...
Apache Cassandra" 6 Accord transactions: What you need to know
3+ week, 3+ day ago (740+ words) April 24, 2026 | By Mariah Mc Laughlin Experiences like these depend on transactional guarantees at the data layer, which rely on ACID semantics, particularly atomicity and isolation, to prevent inconsistent intermediate states. Because Cassandra is designed to deal with data replication and…...
Apache Kafka" 4. 1. 0: Advancing Queues and rack-aware rebalancing returns
3+ week, 5+ day ago (606+ words) April 22, 2026 | By Paul Brebner What is new in the latest Kafka release? In my previous blog, I introduced the new Streams Rebalance Protocol. Now, I'm diving into more exciting Apache Kafka 4. 1. X features. We welcome back rack-aware partition rebalancing (KIP…...
What's new in Kafka" 4. 1. 0? Introducing the new Streams Rebalance Protocol
4+ week, 36+ min ago (668+ words) April 20, 2026 | By Paul Brebner It's been a while since I've looked at new Apache Kafka versions and features (Kafka 4. 0. 0 back in July/August 2025, just after we released 4. 0 as GA on our managed platform). There were lots of new additions in…...