Instaclustr for Apache Kafka® and Kafka ® Connect 3.9.1 are generally available

June 30, 2025 | By Varun Ghai

 

Apache Kafka and Kafka Connect 3.9.1 are now generally available on the NetApp Instaclustr Managed Platform.     

Kafka 3.9.1 is the latest Kafka version, released by the Kafka project in May 2025. It comes with fixes for many bugs, including some security vulnerabilities. More details can be found in the release notes.  

The most notable fix is for multiple recently announced security vulnerabilities (CVE-2025-27819, CVE-2025-27818 and CVE-2025-27817) that impact key components of Kafka. We notified our customers about these with a security advisory, while advising customers running impacted versions to upgrade to Kafka 3.9.1 or Kafka 4.0. Though we have had Kafka 4.0 available on our managed platform for a while, with this release of Kafka 3.9.1, customers can work with us to identify which version to upgrade to, depending on their timelines and needs. 

With this new release, we have reviewed and updated the lifecycle states for our older supported Kafka versions (as per our lifecycle policy). To ensure you get the full benefit of our support and SLAs, please reach out to us and request an upgrade to a GA version. To stay on a supported version of Kafka, we advise customers to upgrade their Kafka versions at least once a year to the latest GA version. More details on all Kafka versions supported on our managed platform are available here.

Prior to deploying a new Kafka version in production, we recommend trying your preferred Kafka version in a non-production environment to confirm compatibility with your Kafka clients. If you need any help spinning up a new Kafka cluster or upgrading existing managed Kafka clusters, please feel free to get in touch with us via our support website.   

In addition to the above, we are excited to announce the release of two new bundled connectors on our managed platform, for immediate use by customers of Instaclustr for Kafka Connect: 

  • JDBC Source and Sink connector: This pair of connectors streamlines data movement between Kafka and relational databases, a common enterprise requirement. The connector is based on the open-source connector available here. Both are documented as being able to work with a variety of databases, such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, SQLite, Oracle and more. For a full list of supported databases for the source connector, refer to this page, while this one provides similar details for the sink connector. You can find more detailed information on using these connectors with Instaclustr for PostgreSQL here. 
    • JDBC Source connector: With the source connector, you can transfer data from multiple sources into Kafka topics. At a user-configurable polling interval, the connector will connect to the specified data source and retrieve the data.  
    • JDBC Sink connector: Supporting data flow in the opposite manner to the JDBC Source connector, the JDBC Sink connector subscribes to specified Kafka topics and transfers data to corresponding tables in the configured database. To work correctly, this connector needs knowledge of key and value schemas and so it would have to be used with a converter with schema support. 
  • ClickHouse Sink connector: Based on the open-source ClickHouse Sink connector, by making it available on our managed platform, we’re significantly increasing the ease with which our customers can integrate their real-time data streams from Kafka with a high-performance analytics database, ClickHouse. With a push-based design, support for exactly-once delivery semantics, and support for all ClickHouse data types, this connector is best positioned to handle even demanding workloads of our enterprise customers. You can find detailed steps for using this connector with Instaclustr for ClickHouse here. 

Using our bundled connectors, customers gain significant benefits at no additional charge or effort: 

  • Reduced operational overhead: Customers no longer need to spend time researching, downloading, testing and deploying various open-source or proprietary connectors as prebuilt connectors can be enabled and configured now in a few clicks. We also take on the responsibility of maintaining, patching and upgrading bundled connectors at regular intervals ensuring the connectors remain secure, performant and compatible with newer versions of Kafka, Kafka Connect and the other external systems they move data from/to. In case issues arise, customers can avail of our round-the-clock expert teams, enabling effective troubleshooting and quicker resolution. Best of all – we do all that for you as part of our managed service ! 
  • Accelerated deployment: With bundled connectors customers can set up their data pipelines in a matter of minutes rather than hours or days. By taking away this complexity, customer’s resources can be freed up to docus on developing core business logic instead of building and maintaining connectors. 
  • Enhanced reliability and performance: Leveraging our deep open-source expertise, we ensure bundled connector are preconfigured for optimal performance for most use-cases. Additionally, for our multi-tech customers who may be using other techs these connectors support, our connectors will already be tested to work end-to-end, while ensuring compatibility and superior performance. 

If you haven’t already done so, we encourage you to try our managed Instaclustr for Kafka Connect managed service with bundled connectors. Should you require help getting started, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our support team.