DOC-1350 Document feature Serverless on GCP

[micheleRP]

Description

This pull request updates documentation to reflect the introduction of Redpanda Serverless clusters on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) as a beta release.

• Updated Cloud Overview and serverless.adoc to clarify that Serverless on AWS is in limited availability (LA), while Serverless on GCP is in beta.
• Added "What's New" entries for November 2025 announcing Serverless on GCP beta and RPCN wizard
• Updated the list of supported regions for Serverless clusters to include GCP (us-central1) alongside AWS regions.

Resolves https://redpandadata.atlassian.net/browse/DOC-1350
Review deadline:

Page previews

What's New
Create a Serverless Cluster
Serverless Regions
Cloud Overview

Checks

• New feature
• Content gap
• Support Follow-up
• Small fix (typos, links, copyedits, etc)

[netlify]

✅ Deploy Preview for rp-cloud ready!

Name	Link
🔨 Latest commit	d0ac16e
🔍 Latest deploy log	https://app.netlify.com/projects/rp-cloud/deploys/69018f925e3fb20008b0964e
😎 Deploy Preview	https://deploy-preview-432--rp-cloud.netlify.app
📱 Preview on mobile	Toggle QR Code... Use your smartphone camera to open QR code link.

---

To edit notification comments on pull requests, go to your Netlify project configuration.

[coderabbitai]

📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

The PR restructures Serverless documentation: converts narrative steps into modular sections with explicit prerequisites, get-started flow, and interaction guidance. Adds a formal NOTE block for availability by cloud (AWS/GCP) and introduces a tabular Serverless usage limits section. Expands connection instructions for UI, rpk, Kafka API, and Redpanda Connect, including ACLs/security references and bootstrap server guidance. Updates What’s New with GCP Serverless (beta) and a Connect quick start. Adds GCP to Serverless supported regions (us-central1). Updates onboarding partial to include a welcome cluster, hello-world topic, and concrete CLI/UI steps.

Sequence Diagram(s)

sequenceDiagram
  autonumber
  actor User
  participant CloudUI as Redpanda Cloud UI
  participant Cluster as Serverless Cluster
  participant KafkaAPI as Kafka API
  participant rpk as rpk CLI

  Note over CloudUI,Cluster: New structure: prerequisites, usage limits (table), availability note per cloud
  User->>CloudUI: Sign in and open Welcome cluster
  CloudUI-->>User: Show bootstrap server URL and security settings
  User->>rpk: rpk cloud login / configure
  rpk->>KafkaAPI: Authenticate using provided credentials
  rpk->>KafkaAPI: Produce/consume on hello-world topic
  KafkaAPI-->>rpk: ACKs/messages
  rpk-->>User: Output records and status

Loading

sequenceDiagram
  autonumber
  actor User
  participant CloudUI as Redpanda Cloud UI
  participant Connect as Redpanda Connect
  participant Source as Data Source
  participant Topic as Redpanda Topic

  Note over CloudUI,Connect: New quick start with Redpanda Connect in Serverless docs
  User->>CloudUI: Open Connect quick start
  CloudUI->>Connect: Create pipeline (source -> topic)
  Connect->>Source: Pull data (configured credentials)
  Connect->>Topic: Publish records
  Topic-->>User: Data visible via rpk/UI

Loading

Estimated code review effort

🎯 3 (Moderate) | ⏱️ ~25 minutes

Possibly related PRs

• DOC-1056 Serverless not multi-az #264: Edits the same Serverless page; overlaps on availability/metrics wording updates.
• DOC-1646 RBAC in DP not supported for Serverless #403: Updates Serverless docs around RBAC/security, aligning with this PR’s ACLs/security additions.
• Serverless standard tiers should be removed #305: Modifies Serverless regions documentation, related to adding GCP region entries.

Suggested reviewers

• paulohtb6
• kbatuigas
• Feediver1

Pre-merge checks and finishing touches

✅ Passed checks (5 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Title Check	✅ Passed	The title succinctly captures the main change of documenting the Serverless feature on GCP and clearly aligns with the PR’s primary objective of adding GCP Serverless documentation.
Linked Issues Check	✅ Passed	The documentation updates fully address the objectives of documenting GCP Serverless in beta, clarifying availability limitations, integrating new Get Started instructions with Redpanda Connect, and adding the GCP region to supported regions.
Out of Scope Changes Check	✅ Passed	All changes are directly related to the linked issue objectives by updating Serverless documentation pages, adding GCP-specific content, and enhancing the get-started flow for Redpanda Connect, with no unrelated or extraneous edits.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changes. Docstring coverage check skipped.
Description Check	✅ Passed	The pull request description follows the template structure well, including all major required sections: a clear Description section explaining the changes and linking to a tracking issue (DOC-1350 in Jira), a Page previews section with four properly formatted preview links covering the modified files, and a Checks section with "New feature" appropriately selected. The description is substantive and accurately summarizes the changes reflected in the raw_summary, explaining that the PR documents Serverless clusters on GCP as beta and clarifies AWS status as limited availability. The review deadline field is left blank but appears to be informational rather than mandatory. The only minor deviation is that the template requests a GitHub issue link while the author provided a Jira issue link, though this appears to be the organization's standard practice based on the PR objectives document.

✨ Finishing touches

• 📝 Generate docstrings

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Post copyable unit tests in a comment
• Commit unit tests in branch DOC-1350-Document-feature-Serverless-on-GCP

---

_{Comment @coderabbitai help to get the list of available commands and usage tips.}

[coderabbitai]

Actionable comments posted: 1

📜 Review details

Configuration used: CodeRabbit UI

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro

Disabled knowledge base sources:

• Jira integration is disabled by default for public repositories

You can enable these sources in your CodeRabbit configuration.

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between a632ef1 and 487d353.

📒 Files selected for processing (4)

• modules/get-started/pages/cluster-types/serverless.adoc (3 hunks)
• modules/get-started/pages/whats-new-cloud.adoc (1 hunks)
• modules/get-started/partials/get-started-serverless.adoc (1 hunks)
• modules/reference/pages/tiers/serverless-regions.adoc (1 hunks)

⏰ Context from checks skipped due to timeout of 90000ms. You can increase the timeout in your CodeRabbit configuration to a maximum of 15 minutes (900000ms). (3)

• GitHub Check: Redirect rules - rp-cloud
• GitHub Check: Header rules - rp-cloud
• GitHub Check: Pages changed - rp-cloud

[nicolaferraro]

LGTM. My only comment is about the pre-existing AWS LA description, that does not describe reality. Maybe @towfiqa can chime in

[towfiqa]

Not sure what we mean here by "may need to wait for availability". I think we can remove

[micheleRP]

thanks, I've removed that sentence

[towfiqa]

Except for that one sentence where I commented the rest looks great.