Upgrades and Maintenance

As a fully-managed service, the Redpanda Cloud control plane handles all maintenance operations, such as upgrades to your software and infrastructure.

Redpanda runs maintenance operations on clusters in a rolling fashion, accompanied by a series of health checks, so there is no disruption to the availability of your service. As part of the Kafka protocol, recycling nodes triggers client connections to be restarted. All mainstream client libraries support automatic reconnections when a restart occurs.

Maintenance windows

Redpanda Cloud may run maintenance operations on any day, at any time. You can override this default and schedule a specific maintenance window on your cluster’s Cluster settings page.

If you select a Scheduled maintenance window, then Redpanda Cloud runs operations on the day and time specified. Maintenance windows typically take six hours. All operations begin during your maintenance window, but some operations may complete after the window closes. All times are in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).

Redpanda Cloud maintenance cycles always start on Tuesdays. Clusters scheduled for maintenance on Tuesdays are updated first, and clusters scheduled on Mondays are updated last. Keep this in mind when sequencing updates for multiple clusters.

Minor upgrades

During your defined maintenance window, Redpanda Cloud runs minor upgrades. Minor upgrades include standard Redpanda state changes that clients handle gracefully, such as leader elections.

Category Details

Impact

Minimal.

Examples

  • Patches to known issues.

  • Cluster rolling restart.

  • Upgrade Redpanda to a fully backward-compatible version.

Frequency

Minor upgrades could happen multiple times a day.

Communication

Prior communication happens only if necessary.

There could be email notifications, updated documentation, release notes, or communication from your Redpanda account team.

Timing

At Redpanda’s discretion during your defined maintenance window.

Major upgrades

Major upgrades may require code changes to customer applications, such as Kafka clients or API integrations.

Category Details

Impact

Potentially large.

Examples

  • Upgrade Kafka to a version that is not fully backward-compatible with the previous version.

  • Update an API version.

  • Security update that materially changes cluster or client throughput.

Frequency

Rare.

Communication

Email notifications may be sent to registered users with details about the change and available options.

There could be updated documentation, release notes, and communication from your Redpanda account team.

Timing

Major upgrades may be coordinated with customers, but the final date set by Redpanda is not negotiable.

Deprecations

Deprecations indicate future removal of features that you can currently use. There is no guarantee of equivalent functionality in new versions. Deprecations could be included in major upgrades.

Category Details

Impact

Potentially large, if you depend on the feature being deprecated.

Examples

  • Remove a feature from the UI.

  • Shut down an API version.

  • Remove a connector as an option.

Frequency

Rare.

Communication

Email notifications may be sent to registered users with details about the change and available alternatives.

There could be updated documentation, release notes, and communication from your Redpanda account team.

Timing

At Redpanda’s discretion.

See also: Redpanda Cloud API Deprecation Policy

Deprecated features

Deprecated in Feature Details

March 2025

Serverless Standard

For a better customer experience, the Serverless Standard and Serverless Pro products merged into a single offering. Serverless clusters include the higher usage limits, 99.9% SLA, additional regions, and the free trial.

February 2025

Private Service Connect v1

The Redpanda GCP Private Service Connect v2 service provides the ability to allow requests from Private Service Connect endpoints to stay within the same availability zone, avoiding additional networking costs. To upgrade, contact Redpanda Support.