The Link To Cloud: How to Build a Seamless and Secure Hybrid Data Bridge with Cluster Linking

Confluent Platform 7.1 and Confluent Cloud now offer Cluster Linking, a built-in capability that mirrors data, topic configuration, and consumer offsets from one cluster to another in real-time, providing a secure, scalable, and easy-to-use hybrid data bridge between on-premises and cloud-based clusters. To create a cluster link, you need two halves of the single cluster link - one on each cluster - which can be created using Confluent's CLI commands or REST API calls. The source-initiated cluster link requires creating separate configuration files for both clusters, containing security credentials and other settings. Once created, Cluster Linking allows geo-replication of data from on-premises to the cloud, enabling organizations to execute a hybrid cloud strategy or migrate from a datacenter to the cloud with minimal disruption.