Confluent for Kubernetes has added declarative API support for Cluster Linking, allowing users to connect public and private cloud environments with a declarative API. This feature provides a complete, declarative API-driven experience for deploying and self-managing Confluent Platform as a cloud-native system. With the release of Confluent Platform 7.0, Confluent announced the general availability of Cluster Linking in Confluent Platform and Confluent Cloud. The declarative API enables users to express the state of their infrastructure and application state as code in YAML files, which can be checked into a Git repository for collaboration. This approach is referred to as GitOps. Confluent for Kubernetes provides a declarative ClusterLink API to configure and manage Cluster Linking, allowing users to define the desired state of their cluster links using a CustomResource based on the ClusterLink CustomResourceDefinition. The feature also includes authentication and TLS information, which can be configured directly via secrets or HashiCorp Vault. With this feature, users can create hybrid cloud environments with simplicity, flexibility, and efficiency without the complexities of Kafka-related infrastructure operations.