Kafka Migration
Switch providers without rewriting applications. Cut migration timelines in half.
Whether you're migrating to the cloud, switching providers, or consolidating clusters as part of the move, Conduktor gives you the visibility and control to act without disruption.
Most Kafka Migrations Hit the Same Problems
Migration projects stall when hidden dependencies surface mid-cutover, when application teams have to be coordinated for every cluster change, or when years of estate sprawl make any kind of move feel impossible. The technical work is rarely the hard part. Coordination, dependency discovery, and rollback safety are.
Migrations That Stall or Blow Budget
Migration budgets balloon 30-50% as hidden dependencies surface mid-project. Engineering capacity gets consumed by manual topology mapping and cross-team coordination. Critical blockers discovered during cutover force rollbacks and restarts.
Application Changes Cascade Across Teams
Every cluster move requires updating bootstrap servers, redeploying clients, and coordinating with every consuming team. What should be a platform task turns into a multi-quarter cross-team project.
Estate Sprawl Slows Every Move
Years of one-cluster-per-team accumulation make provider switches and cloud migrations feel impossible. Each cluster has its own owners, dependencies, and informal coordination that has to be unwound before anything can change.
Transparent Traffic Routing
Gateway sits between your applications and Kafka, enabling cluster switches without application code changes. Migrate cluster-by-cluster while applications keep running.
Cross-Provider Visibility
Unified view across OSS Kafka, MSK, Confluent, and Aiven. Automatically discover topics, consumer groups, connectors, and schemas across providers. Plan migration with complete resource data.
Automatic Resource Discovery
Index every topic, consumer group, connector, and schema across all connected clusters. Replace manual spreadsheets and team interviews with a complete resource inventory and dependency graph.
Topic Aliasing
Remap topic names transparently at the Gateway layer. Applications continue using their existing topic names while the underlying infrastructure changes beneath them.
Phased Cutover
Migrate workloads incrementally rather than in a single risky cutover. Route specific topics to the new cluster while others stay on the old one, then cut over the rest when ready.
Instant Rollback
Gateway routes traffic at the proxy layer, so cutting back to the old cluster takes seconds. No application redeploys, no DNS changes, no risk of permanent state.
Learn more: Gateway overview · Virtual clusters · Insights
How Migration Works
Four steps from fragmented estate to migrated and stable.
Conduktor connects to all your clusters and automatically discovers topics, consumer groups, connectors, and schemas. You get a complete picture of what you're running, who's using it, and what depends on what. No more spreadsheets.
Insights flags empty, stale, and tiny topics that are better retired than migrated, plus high-impact topics with many consumers that warrant extra care during cutover. The result is a smaller, prioritized scope instead of lifting everything as-is.
Gateway routes traffic transparently. Applications point to Gateway, and the underlying cluster can change without code modifications, config updates, or cross-team coordination. The same architecture powers disaster recovery and failover.
With routing controlled at the Gateway layer, you can move topics one at a time, verify each cutover in production, and cut over the rest once stability is confirmed. If anything goes wrong, rollback takes seconds rather than days.
Zero Downtime Cutover
Transparent traffic routing enables cluster migrations without service interruption or application changes.
50% Faster Migration Timeline
Automatic resource relationship discovery and Gateway-based routing replace months of manual coordination and cross-team planning.
Zero Application Changes
Applications continue using existing client configurations through cutover, eliminating coordination across product teams.
Seconds to Roll Back
Gateway-level routing means rollback is reversing a config, not redeploying applications or restoring backups.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does Conduktor enable migration without application changes?
Applications connect to Conduktor Gateway using standard Kafka clients. Gateway manages the connection to the underlying cluster. When you're ready to migrate, Gateway routes traffic to the new cluster transparently. Your applications don't need new configs, restarts, or code changes. You can migrate gradually and roll back instantly if needed.
Can I migrate without risking production?
Yes. Gateway handles traffic routing transparently, so you can move workloads incrementally rather than in a single risky cutover. If you're consolidating clusters as part of the migration, virtual clusters provide logical isolation on shared physical infrastructure so teams maintain their own namespaces and access controls.
Does this work across different Kafka providers?
Yes. Conduktor provides a unified control plane across OSS Kafka, Amazon MSK, Confluent Cloud, Aiven, and self-managed deployments. You can migrate between providers without application awareness.
How do I prioritize what to migrate first?
Conduktor Insights surfaces empty, stale, and tiny topics across your clusters that are better retired than migrated, plus high-impact topics with many consumers that warrant extra care during cutover. Combined with the resource inventory in Console, you get the data needed to scope the work and prioritize by impact rather than guesswork. This cleanup work overlaps with broader Kafka cost optimization.
What about topic naming conflicts during migration?
Gateway supports topic aliasing, which lets you remap topic names at the proxy layer. Applications continue using their existing topic names while the physical topics are reorganized underneath. No naming collisions, no code changes.
How do I map resources before starting a migration?
Conduktor automatically indexes topics, consumer groups, connectors, and schemas across all connected clusters. Instead of manually building spreadsheets or interviewing application teams, you get a complete resource inventory that shows which consumer groups subscribe to which topics, connector-to-topic relationships, and resource ownership. This is what makes it possible to sequence migrations by complexity and avoid surprises during cutover.
What happens if something goes wrong during cutover?
Gateway routes traffic at the proxy layer, so rolling back to the original cluster is a config change, not an application redeploy. If a problem surfaces during cutover, you can revert in seconds and address the issue without losing time or data.
Ready to plan your Kafka migration?
See how Conduktor accelerates Kafka migration without disrupting running applications. Our team can help you map your current estate and plan a phased cutover that delivers value in weeks, not quarters.