We’re excited to introduce Freight clusters—a new type of Confluent Cloud cluster designed for high-throughput, relaxed latency workloads that is up to 90% cheaper than self-managing open source Apache Kafka®. Freight clusters utilize the latest innovations in Confluent Cloud’s cloud-native engine, Kora, to deliver low cost networking by trading off ultra low latency performance.

Confluent has published official Docker containers for many years. They are the basis for deploying a cluster in Kubernetes using Confluent for Kubernetes (CFK), and one of the underpinning technologies behind Confluent Cloud. For testing, containers are convenient for quickly spinning up a local cluster with all the components required, such as Confluent Schema Registry or Confluent Control Center.

There are plenty of materials available out there about Schema Registry. From Confluent alone, if you head to Confluent Developer and search “Schema Registry” you will discover an ever-growing repository of over 100 results including courses, articles, tutorials, blog posts, and more, providing comprehensive resources for enthusiasts and professionals alike.

The rise of fully managed cloud services fundamentally changed the technology landscape and introduced benefits like increased flexibility, accelerated deployment, and reduced downtime. Confluent offers a portfolio of 80+ fully managed connectors that enables quick, easy, and reliable integration of Confluent Cloud with popular data sources and sinks, connecting your entire system in real time.

Have you ever wondered how to track events in a large codebase? I gave it a shot using Apache Kafka®! Read on to learn how to use GitHub data as a source, process it using a Kafka Streams topology, and send it to a Kafka topic.

In this article, we present some best practices and key concepts for using Confluent Schema Registry.

We’re excited to share the latest and greatest features on Confluent Cloud, in our first launch of 2024. This Cloud Launch comes to you from Kafka Summit London, where we talked about the latest updates highlighted in our launch, including serverless Apache Flink®, some exciting pricing changes, updates to connectors, and more! We also shared our vision for a future offering, Tableflow.