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Redpanda Connect Microsoft SQL Server CDC

Redpanda Connect's Microsoft SQL Server CDC input (microsoft_sql_server_cdc) is a Redpanda Connect input component introduced with the 25.3-era Redpanda Connect 4.67.5 release (announced 2025-11-06). It adds Microsoft SQL Server as the fifth source-database engine in Redpanda's per-engine CDC-connector family — after Postgres, MySQL, MongoDB, and Spanner (canonicalised in the 2025-03-18 3 powerful connectors post).

Canonical verbatim

From the sources/2025-11-06-redpanda-253-delivers-near-instant-disaster-recovery-and-more|25.3 launch post:

"Using dedicated change tables, the connector non-invasively captures every single insert, update, and delete from your SQL Server tables in real time and streams them into Redpanda with minimal impact on the source database's performance."

Mechanism

The connector rides on SQL Server's native CDC feature — "dedicated change tables" — the system tables SQL Server populates when CDC is enabled on source tables. This is the same engine-native change-log-consumption pattern as the rest of the Redpanda Connect CDC family: Postgres logical replication slots, MySQL binlog, MongoDB change streams, Spanner change streams. Fits the wiki's CDC driver ecosystem framing (one connector per source-database engine, per-engine native change log).

Vendor benchmark

The launch post discloses a side-by-side benchmark:

System Avg ingest rate Initial snapshot (5M rows)
Redpanda Connect MSSQL CDC ~40 MB/sec 3:15
"Alternative hosted Kafka + CDC service" (unnamed) ~14.5 MB/sec 8:04

Disclosed test setup:

"One table (5 million rows); SQL Server co-located with Azure instance running Redpanda Connect (instance specs: 4 vCPUs bound to 1 logical core, 16 GB memory); default settings used; identical schema/workload across runs. Your results will vary by table size, change rate, and environment."

Use case framing

The launch post frames MSSQL CDC as the "key to safely unlocking the value" of "decades-old" SQL Server OLTP systems:

"Every established enterprise has a crown jewel. That critical, battle-hardened OLTP database that runs a huge part of the business and that everyone is terrified to touch. The data inside is priceless, but it's locked away, inaccessible to your modern, event-driven applications."

"This is your playbook for low-risk modernization. Instead of a high-risk, 'big bang' migration, you can pursue an evolutionary strategy. Leave the legacy system running, stream its data into Redpanda, and start building new microservices and real-time analytics around it."

Availability

  • Redpanda Connect: enterprise connector starting in version 4.67.5.
  • Redpanda Cloud: available at launch.
  • Licensing: enterprise (consistent with the 2025-03-18 CDC input connectors, not the Apache-2.0 dynamic-plugin framework).

Undisclosed

  • Topology scope unstated. The 2025-03-18 MySQL CDC post explicitly limited its connector to no-GTID / no-Group- Replication / no-multi-source; the MSSQL post does not state analogous scope (Always On AG, mirroring, log shipping, cross-instance replication not named either way).
  • Parallel snapshot not named. The 2025-03-18 post canonicalised parallel snapshot of a single large table as the Postgres + MongoDB CDC differentiator vs Debezium; the MSSQL benchmark doesn't state whether MSSQL CDC has this capability.
  • Schema-evolution behaviour unstated.
  • Delta-capture vs snapshot mode division unwalked.
  • Benchmark alternative unnamed. "Alternative hosted Kafka + CDC service" — vendor-benchmark standard caveat.

Seen in

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