Confluent Private Cloud Broker Density and Policy Enforcement

7 posts · Aug 2020 – May 2026

What this trail covers

Confluent Private Cloud (CPC) introduces a new deployment model for platform teams, bringing cloud-native operational efficiencies to private infrastructure. It enhances Kafka performance with Intelligent Replication, centralizes governance and policy enforcement with CPC Gateway, and unifies management and monitoring across hybrid and multi-cloud environments with Unified Stream Manager (USM). CPC aims to reduce infrastructure and operating costs by up to 50% by automating lifecycle management, improving client management, and enabling Kafka-as-a-service capabilities.

All Confluent trails

May 2026Proven: Up to 73% Fewer Brokers With Confluent Private Cloud – and MoreThis post presents benchmarking data demonstrating Confluent Private Cloud's (CPC) efficiency compared to Apache Kafka (AK). Key findings include: 1) CPC with Intelligent Replication (IR) matches AK's p99 latency with up to 73% fewer brokers, exemplified by a 21-broker AK cluster at 250 MB/s matching CPC's latency with 7 brokers. 2) CPC with IR offers up to 83% lower tail latency on identical infrastructure under heavy load. 3) CPC eliminates the 'latency cliff' seen in AK, showing only a 16% latency increase at peak saturation versus AK's >5x spike. 4) CPC provides exponential savings for large-scale workloads, with up to 73% broker reduction for 14,000 partitions. The post also pre-announces Early Access for CPC Centralized Policy Enforcement, featuring Gateway Field Level Encryption, Gateway Payload Encryption, and Deep Schema Validation, and pre-announces broker-native multi-tenancy for CPC, introducing Logical Kafka Clusters (LKCs) on Physical Kafka Clusters (PKCs) with isolation, quotas, and observability.
Oct 2025Introducing Confluent Private CloudThis post introduces Confluent Private Cloud, a new deployment model for platform teams running Kafka at scale in private environments. It highlights three key components: Confluent Private Cloud Gateway for centralized client management, authentication, authorization, and migration without client code changes; Intelligent Replication for improved performance and latency by optimizing data replication between brokers; and Unified Stream Manager (USM) for unified governance and monitoring across hybrid and multi-cloud Kafka deployments. The goal is to reduce operational complexity and costs by up to 50%.
Oct 2025Unified Stream Manager GA in Confluent Platform 8.1This post announces the General Availability (GA) of Unified Stream Manager (USM) with Confluent Platform 8.1. USM provides a unified management and monitoring experience for on-premises and cloud-based Confluent clusters. Key technical contributions include: establishing a secure private network connection (initially AWS PrivateLink) between on-prem Confluent Platform and Confluent Cloud for metadata and telemetry sharing; making Confluent Cloud Schema Registry the single source of truth for schemas across hybrid environments, with on-prem Schema Registries acting as read-only caches; enabling consistent data contract enforcement and client-side field-level encryption (CSFLE) for sensitive data; consolidating observability into a single Confluent Cloud UI for monitoring on-prem Kafka brokers, topics, connectors, and clients; integrating Data Portal for unified data discovery; and introducing end-to-end data stream tracing across hybrid environments. The USM agent is a lightweight component deployed on-prem to collect and stream operational data securely. The post also highlights additional enhancements in Confluent Platform 8.1, including Control Center visibility tools, Queues for Kafka open preview, Azure UAMI for Kafka OAuth, and updates to Confluent Platform for Apache Flink® (support for Flink 2.0.0/2.1.0, REST API for savepoints, PyFlink/TableAPI, and external metadata storage).
Jul 2025Introducing Private Network Interface (PNI) on AWS: Lower Kafka Networking Costs by 50%Introduces Private Network Interface (PNI) on AWS as a new private networking option for Confluent Cloud, designed to reduce networking costs and enhance security. PNI leverages AWS Elastic Network Interfaces (ENIs) for secure, low-latency, high-throughput connectivity directly within the customer's VPC. It eliminates the cost-security trade-offs of VPC peering and PrivateLink by offering centralized security policy enforcement, freedom from IP address management, and reduced data transfer costs. The post details cost savings achieved through PNI on both Enterprise and Freight clusters, with specific examples showing significant reductions compared to PrivateLink. It also highlights the elimination of cross-AZ networking costs and reduced data transfer/processing fees as key drivers of these savings. A case study with Indeed illustrates the practical implementation and benefits of PNI and Freight for cost-efficient and secure data infrastructure.
Feb 2025Cluster Linking for Azure Private Link is available in Confluent CloudIntroduces Cluster Linking support for Azure Private Link, enabling secure, private data replication between Kafka clusters within Azure private networks. This eliminates the need for public networking for multi-cluster replication and data mobility, reducing operational overhead and enhancing security for disaster recovery, migration, and data sharing scenarios.
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Apr 2024Secure Integrations With Any Cloud, Any Network | Confluent CloudThis post details how Confluent Cloud enables secure integrations with external data sources and sinks through various networking features. It explains the use of Public Egress IPs for IP-based firewalling, AWS Gateway and Azure VNet Service Endpoints for secure traffic within cloud networks, DNS Forwarding for resolving private FQDNs in peered networks, and Egress Access Points for PrivateLink connections. It provides specific examples for AWS S3 Sink Connector and HTTP source connector, outlining configuration steps and underlying technologies like TLS, VPC Interface Endpoints, and Azure Private Endpoints.
Dec 2023Best Practices For Managing Enterprise Apache Kafka® ClustersThis post discusses strategies for managing enterprise Apache Kafka clusters, moving from a decentralized, organic growth model to a centralized platform approach. It highlights the benefits of standardization, cost reduction, improved quality of service, and reduced governance risks associated with consolidation. It also outlines the trade-offs of full centralization, such as meeting superset requirements and organizational transformation challenges. The post uses a customer story to illustrate cost savings and improved reliability achieved through consolidation and the establishment of a Kafka-as-a-Service (KaaS) team. It also touches upon data mesh, data products, and domain-driven design as frameworks for data strategy.
Aug 2020Confluent Cloud Now Supports AWS PrivateLink for Secure Network ConnectivityThis post introduces AWS PrivateLink support for Confluent Cloud Dedicated clusters, enabling secure, private network connectivity from customer VPCs. It details the benefits over VPC peering, such as simplified IP address management and one-way connectivity. The technical implementation involved updating networking infrastructure to use Network Load Balancers and building new services for self-serve management of PrivateLink service endpoints and customer account registration. A Terraform script is provided to automate VPC endpoint setup.