Announcing Cloudera Data Flow 3.2 for Cloudera on Cloud

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The Data In Motion Team is pleased to announce the release of Cloudera Data Flow 3.2 for Cloudera on cloud.

In this release, we’ve focused on major architectural modernization and eliminating friction across the development lifecycle. By introducing zero-touch, cross-cluster authentication, smarter cloud resource management, and a massive upgrade to our underlying infrastructure, we are delivering a more resilient, secure, and intuitive Cloudera Data Flow.

Release Highlights:

Frictionless Cross-Cluster Communication: We introduced DefaultNodeSSLContextService. This allows you to seamlessly send data from one NiFi cluster (deployment or test session) to another within the same Cloudera Data Flow environment, completely removing the overhead of manually managing and rotating certificates.

Optimized Parameter Groups in Drafts: Drafts that import Shared Parameter Groups benefit from dramatically improved performance, timeout resilience, and reliability when managing parameters at scale.

Primary Node Execution Protection: Processors that require primary-node execution (such as ListS3 or QueryDatabaseTable) now default to and are validated against “Primary Node” execution, preventing invalid multi-node configurations.

Key Improvements:

• Cloud Resource Cleanup: Canceling a new test session now automatically removes all underlying resources (e.g., volumes and namespaces) to prevent wasted cloud spend.
• Deployment and Test Session Stability: Resolved issues causing orphaned test sessions to block environment disablement, and ensured that terminating a deployed flow succeeds even if its underlying NiFi process group was previously deleted.
• Test Session Resiliency: Eliminated reconfiguration errors when suspending or resuming test sessions that utilize Custom NARs.
• Deployment Wizard Fixes: Fixed state-validation bugs in the deployment wizard and ensured file uploads to processor properties are correctly recognized as asset-capable.

Platform and Security Updates: 

• Latest Kubernetes Support: Cloudera Data Flow 3.2 introduces official support for EKS/AKS 1.36. By providing the latest available AKS/EKS versions, we ensure your environments run on the latest infrastructure while giving you the maximum possible leeway for underlying infrastructure support.
• Automated Database Upgrades: The underlying PostgreSQL database is now automatically upgraded alongside your Cloudera Data Flow environment. With this release, PostgreSQL is upgraded to version 17.
• Hardened Security Posture: To stay ahead of evolving threats and software licensing changes, OpenBao has officially replaced HashiCorp Vault. We have also applied critical security patches and ensured JWT authentication tokens cannot be extended indefinitely.
• Streamlined Architecture: As part of our ongoing effort to reduce complexity and backend component overhead, we have completely removed Apache ZooKeeper from Cloudera Data Flow.
• Latest Runtime Enhancements: This release maintains NiFi 2.6.0 and NiFi 1.28.1. 

Upgrading to the New Release:

Customers can perform in-place upgrades from supported Cloudera Data Flow versions to 3.2. Alternatively, disabling and re-enabling an existing Data Flow environment will cause the re-enabled environment to run the latest version. 

• Important Advisory: Moving to EKS/AKS 1.36 requires a sequential upgrade path (from 1.34 to 1.35, and then to 1.36). Due to this multi-step process, upgrading to Cloudera Data Flow 3.2 may take up to two hours. Please plan your maintenance windows to accommodate this extended duration.

• Important Advisory: To maintain a seamless, standard upgrade experience, we recommend upgrading to Cloudera Data Flow 3.2 no later than December 31, 2026. This timeline ensures your upgrade path is as straightforward as possible.
• Note: Before initiating the upgrade, please ensure that you have reviewed the upgrade prerequisites. 

Looking Ahead: NiFi 1 End of Support (September 2027): To ensure we deliver the most advanced and secure data streaming capabilities, Cloudera will end support for Apache NiFi 1.x in September 2027. We are sharing this in advance so you can start planning your migration to NiFi 2.x. In the meantime, Cloudera Data Flow 3.2 provides full support for both NiFi 1.28.1 and NiFi 2.6.0.

Links:

1. Release notes 
2. Documentation

Big thanks to everyone who supported and contributed to this release!