Grafana Cloud has introduced a new integration for Apache Kafka, offering comprehensive monitoring capabilities through a series of dashboards that provide insights into various Kafka components, such as Broker clusters, Zookeeper clusters, Kafka Connect clusters, Schema Registry clusters, and ksqldb clusters. These dashboards monitor key metrics including broker health, topic throughput, consumption lag, and task statistics, utilizing data collected primarily via JMX exporters and an external exporter embedded in the Grafana Agent. This integration aims to enhance observability by bringing together metrics, logs, and traces within Grafana's composable platform, making it easier for users to monitor and manage their Kafka ecosystems. Grafana Cloud offers both free and paid plans, encouraging users to explore its capabilities for observing and alerting on Kafka and other supported technologies, with additional resources and community support available.