DOC-1606 Document Cloud Feature Support ordered rack region preferenc…

[micheleRP]

Description

This pull request single sources the new ordered rack preference feature for Leader Pinning. This updates cloud-docs with the new feature in the "What's New".

• Updated the leader-pinning.adoc page to include new learning objectives about configuring preferred leader placement using rack labels, configuring ordered rack preference for priority-based failover, and identifying conditions where preferred placement is not possible. The title was also changed for clarity.
• Added an entry to the April 2026 section of whats-new-cloud.adoc announcing support for the ordered_racks configuration value in Leader Pinning, explaining its behavior compared to the previous racks option.

Documentation build configuration:

• Updated the Antora playbook (local-antora-playbook.yml) to pull documentation from the branch that documents the new ordered rack preference feature for Leader Pinning.

Resolves https://github.com/redpanda-data/documentation-private/issues/
Review deadline:

Page previews

What's New

Checks

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

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

This PR updates documentation and configuration files to document a new ordered rack preference feature for Leader Pinning. The local Antora playbook is updated to include a feature branch from the documentation repository. The Leader Pinning documentation page is renamed to "Configure Leader Pinning" and enriched with learning objective attributes. A new "April 2026" section is added to the "What's New in Redpanda Cloud" page to introduce the ordered rack preference capability.

Estimated code review effort

🎯 2 (Simple) | ⏱️ ~10 minutes

Possibly related PRs

• Fix local playbook #463: Modifies the same local-antora-playbook.yml content source branches list for the documentation repository.
• DOC-1448 update rpk transform in cloud overview #328: Updates the same Antora playbook entry's branches filter for the documentation content source.

Suggested reviewers

• travisdowns
• mattschumpert
• nicolaferraro

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 3

✅ Passed checks (3 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Title check	✅ Passed	The title directly relates to the main objective of documenting the ordered rack preference feature for Leader Pinning, clearly summarizing the primary change across all modified files.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check.
Description check	✅ Passed	The pull request description comprehensively covers all key changes, includes page previews, marks appropriate checkboxes, and provides sufficient context for reviewers.

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✨ Finishing Touches

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Commit unit tests in branch DOC-1606-Document-Cloud-Feature-Support-ordered-rack-region-preference-for-leader-pinning

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[Feediver1]

The learning objectives do not render in the Cloud version. Should they?

[Feediver1]

They don't show in the s-m version either. Asking Claude...

[Feediver1]

The problem is clear now — the :learning-objective-N: attributes are defined inside the // tag::single-source[] block
(body), not in the page header. Let me check how working pages define them and how they're actually rendered.

[kbatuigas]

@micheleRP @Feediver1 I don't know if we need changes to this file, unless the learning objectives are different for Cloud. For Self-Managed, the learning objective attributes are inside the single-source block here: https://github.com/redpanda-data/docs/blob/v-WIP/26.1/modules/develop/pages/produce-data/leader-pinning.adoc?plain=1

So once v-WIP/26.1 is merged to main, this page should just also render those same learning objectives

[Feediver1]

need to circle back after merge to make sure they render.

[kbatuigas]

This branch is already merged in v-WIP/26.1, shouldn't this now point to v-WIP/26.1 for a preview?