Redpanda's latest release, version 23.2, introduces follower fetching, a feature designed to enhance performance, automation, and cost efficiency in both self-hosted and managed Redpanda Cloud deployments. Follower fetching allows consumers to retrieve records from the closest replica of a topic partition, which could be either a leader or a follower, thereby reducing cross-availability zone (AZ) data transfer costs and minimizing read latency. This is achieved through rack awareness, where replicas in the same rack or AZ as the consumer are prioritized, with a rack ID specified via the client.rack property. While standard fetching routes requests to the leader replica, follower fetching optimizes network traffic by utilizing the bandwidth of all nodes in a cluster, potentially lowering infrastructure costs. The update also emphasizes the importance of configuration settings for both clusters and consumers to fully leverage follower fetching, while hinting at future enhancements like "leadership pinning" for better produce traffic optimization.