Broker removal in pre-7.0 versions causes under-replicated partitions

In Confluent Platform versions prior to 7.0, the broker removal process does not gracefully move data before shutting down brokers, resulting in under-replicated partitions during and potentially after the removal operation. This impacts data availability and reliability.

Upgrade to Confluent Platform 7.0 or later before performing broker removals in production. In 7.0+, the removal process first moves data off brokers before shutdown. If running pre-7.0, manually verify partition reassignment completion before broker shutdown. Monitor kafka.server.ReplicaManager.UnderReplicatedPartitions metric during removal operations.