Replication Tool

This step covers two decisions: the Schema Linking Tool (when schema migration is enabled) and the Replication Tool for data migration. Both selections determine the infrastructure and configuration options available in subsequent steps.

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Schema Linking Tool

When schema migration is enabled, select the tool that will synchronize schemas between the source and destination registries.

Confluent Schema Linking

The default option. Confluent Schema Linking provides native integration with Confluent Platform and Confluent Cloud, offering continuous synchronization of schema definitions.

Capabilities:

• Continuous, real-time schema sync
• Supports Avro, JSON Schema, and Protobuf formats
• Native integration with Confluent ecosystem

WarpStream Schema Linking

Uses the WarpStream Pipelines API to synchronize schemas. This option requires additional configuration specific to your WarpStream environment.

Field	Required	Default	Description
Console/API URL	No	https://api.warpstream.com	The WarpStream API endpoint.
WarpStream API Key	Yes		Authentication key for the WarpStream Pipelines API.
Virtual Cluster ID	Yes		The identifier of the target WarpStream virtual cluster.
Sync Interval	No	60 seconds	How frequently schemas are synchronized between registries.

Click Test Connection to validate the WarpStream configuration before proceeding.

Danger

WarpStream Schema Linking has the following restrictions:

• Only AVRO schemas are supported. JSON Schema and Protobuf are not replicated.
• A single pipeline restriction applies per Schema Registry cluster.
• Context-level all-or-nothing control: only the DEFAULT context is supported, with no subject-level filtering.
• No config-time validation is performed. Errors surface only at runtime.
• Schema ID preservation requires the destination registry to be empty before linking begins.

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Choose Replication Tool

Select the tool that will replicate topic data from the source cluster to the destination cluster.

Tool	Description
MirrorMaker 2.0	Open-source, Kafka Connect-based replication. No licensing costs. Suitable for Apache Kafka environments without Confluent Platform.
Cluster Linking	Confluent Platform feature providing byte-level replication with minimal latency. Mirror topics are exact replicas of source topics.
Confluent Replicator	Enterprise-grade replication with support for topic renaming, message transformations, and active-active architectures. Requires an Enterprise License.
WarpStream Orbit	Built-in replication for migrating to WarpStream. Provides offset-preserving replication and consumer group synchronization.

Kerberos (GSSAPI) Constraints

When either the source or destination cluster uses GSSAPI (Kerberos) authentication, the following restrictions apply at the Tool Selection step.

Tool	Behaviour with GSSAPI
MirrorMaker 2	Always selectable. Recommended tool when either cluster uses GSSAPI.
Confluent Replicator	Always selectable.
Cluster Linking	Disabled when either the source or destination uses GSSAPI, regardless of platform type (Confluent Platform, Confluent Cloud, OSK). The radio button cannot be selected.
WarpStream Orbit	Disabled when the source cluster uses GSSAPI.

Caution

A warning alert appears below the tool selection grid explaining which tools are unavailable. The message adapts based on what is disabled — if both Cluster Linking and WarpStream Orbit are disabled, both are mentioned; if only Orbit is affected, only Orbit is mentioned.

Note

If you previously selected Cluster Linking or WarpStream Orbit and then changed a cluster to use GSSAPI, the selection automatically switches to MirrorMaker 2.

ACL Sync

An ACL Sync toggle is available when Cluster Linking is selected as the replication tool. When enabled, ACL rules are replicated from the source cluster to the destination cluster alongside topic data.

Danger

WarpStream Orbit has the following restrictions:

• Only one pipeline is allowed per virtual cluster. Creating a new job replaces any existing Orbit configuration on that virtual cluster.
• SASL_SSL certificates must be present in the agent operating system’s trust store. The suite does not manage certificate installation.
• The Orbit agent auto-prepends “ORBIT_” to environment variable names. Account for this when configuring external integrations.
• No config-time validation is performed. Configuration errors are detected only when the agent starts.
• Each topic mapping requires irreversible_disable_orbit_management, which cannot be undone once applied.