Matthew de Detrich explains the value behind tiered storage in Apache Kafka:
Tiered Storage is arguably one of the most sought-after features of Kafka 3.6, allowing Kafka’s core data to be stored in other locations, such as object storage, in addition to hard disks in a transparent manner, without any changes to Kafka’s producers or consumers. The Kafka brokers control whether the data is stored on local disks, fast but expensive and limited, or in alternative storage places, such as Amazon S3. When Tiered Storage is properly configured, it means you can have the best of both worlds: recent data is stored on local fast disks (as is currently), and older, less frequently accessed data can be stored elsewhere where it’s cheaper and space requirements are less of a concern (sometimes unlimited!)
Read on to learn more about the official version of tiered storage, as well as a forward port of two prior implementation attempts to Kafka version 3.3.