Apache Kafka has made significant improvements in its controlled shutdown time and controller failover time with the release of version 1.1.0, allowing for higher throughput and more partitions in a cluster, up to 200,000 partitions per cluster, with each broker having up to 4,000 partitions, due to improvements in the asynchronous ZooKeeper API and batched communication of new leaders. These improvements significantly reduce the time to restart a Kafka cluster and improve overall availability and scalability. The improvements were made through a community effort over nine months, involving contributions from six different organizations, and demonstrate Apache Kafka's commitment to continuous improvement and growth.