How big is the risk when updating the Kafka version?

Question

We're running AWS MSK in production and for us, it's mission critical. Currently we're using Apache Kafka 2.2.1, but we'd like to upgrade to Kafka 2.4.1.   
  
Is there any risk for data loss or downtime when we press the "Upgrade the Apache Kafka version" button and upgrade to Kafka 2.4.1?

Answer

The Amazon MSK version upgrade feature is based on Kafka best practices and uses a rolling update process that allows Kafka to remain available for cluster IO.  We recommend that customers follow best practices for ensuring high availability (see https://docs.aws.amazon.com/msk/latest/developerguide/bestpractices.html#ensure-high-availability) and to first perform a Kafka upgrade in a staging environment to test for client compatibility during and post upgrade.

How big is the risk when updating the Kafka version?

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