Confluent Cluster Linking

Cluster Linking is replication built into Confluent 17,245 's brokers (Confluent Server and Confluent Cloud 17,245 ). The destination fetches from the source like a follower replica and writes mirror topics: read-only copies identical byte for byte and offset for offset, so consumer offsets copy across without translation; a link can also sync topic settings and, between Confluent Cloud clusters, ACLs. It was not run here (it needs Confluent Cloud or a licensed Confluent Platform); the commands, from Confluent's documentation:

Mirroring a topic over a cluster link and promoting it at cutover (not run here)

confluent kafka link create from-old --cluster <new-cluster-id> \
  --source-cluster <old-cluster-id> --source-bootstrap-server old.example.com:9092 \
  --config link.config                     # consumer.offset.sync.enable=true, credentials
confluent kafka mirror create booknest.order-events --link from-old
confluent kafka mirror promote booknest.order-events --link from-old   # planned cutover

promote refuses while any lag remains, the switch for a planned migration; failover stops mirroring regardless, for a lost region. Into Confluent Cloud, the source may be Apache Kafka 2.4 129 or later (MSK included) and the destination must be Enterprise or Dedicated. A link costs $0.25 an hour on internet endpoints or $0.50 on private networking, plus per-GB charges (Confluent's billing documentation, October 2026).

Three ways to copy a live Kafka cluster (MSK Replicator from AWS 24 documentation; not run here)
	MirrorMaker 2	Cluster Linking	MSK Replicator
Licence, price	Apache 2.0, your workers	Confluent, per link-hour and GB	AWS, managed
Runs as	Connect connectors	Inside the brokers	AWS service
Target offsets	New, translated	Identical	Group offsets synced
Destinations	Any Kafka	Confluent only	MSK only

Google's managed Connect (Google Managed Kafka) and Aiven also offer MirrorMaker 2; into Redpanda 64,862 , Redpanda Migrator copies topics, schemas with their IDs and group offsets.

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