Apache Kafka 4.1 Release: New Features & Upgrade Guide

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Apache Kafka 4.1.0 introduces preview support for Queues for Kafka (KIP-932) and early access to a new Streams Rebalance Protocol (KIP-1071) based on KIP-848. Broker and client improvements include plugin metric registration (KIP-877), consistent transaction error handling (KIP-1050), explicit consumer group leaving on close (KIP-1092), rack topology change rebalance triggers (KIP-1101), unified consumer topic metrics (KIP-1109), deadlock protection for producer network threads (KIP-1118), OAuth JWT-bearer grant type support (KIP-1139), endpoint listener name cleanup (KIP-1143), and transactional ID pattern filtering for ListTransactions (KIP-1152). Kafka Streams enhancements include moving window configurations to SerDes (KIP-1020) and enforcing explicit naming for internal topics (KIP-1111). Kafka Connect now supports running multiple versions of connector plugins (KIP-891).