Release 26.1 docs for Cloud

[JakeSCahill]

Description

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

Page previews

Checks

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

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

Documentation updates to the leader pinning page and cloud release notes. The leader pinning documentation page title changed from "Leader Pinning" to "Configure Leader Pinning" with updated capitalization in the description. Three learning objectives were added to outline rack-label placement, ordered rack preferences for failover, and scenarios where leader pinning cannot place leaders in preferred racks. A new "April 2026" section was added to the cloud release notes announcing support for ordered rack preference in leader pinning configuration.

Estimated code review effort

🎯 1 (Trivial) | ⏱️ ~3 minutes

Possibly related PRs

• DOC-1606 Document Cloud Feature Support ordered rack region preferenc… #537: Modifies the same documentation pages (leader-pinning.adoc and whats-new-cloud.adoc) to add and announce support for the ordered\_racks (ordered rack preference) feature for Leader Pinning.

Suggested reviewers

• micheleRP
• david-yu
• mattschumpert

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 1 | ❌ 2

❌ Failed checks (1 warning, 1 inconclusive)

Check name	Status	Explanation	Resolution
Description check	⚠️ Warning	The description is a template with unfilled placeholders (issue number, review deadline, page previews, and unchecked boxes), providing no actual details about the changes.	Complete the description by filling in the issue number, adding page preview links, selecting appropriate change type checkboxes, and providing details about the ordered rack preference feature.
Title check	❓ Inconclusive	The title "Release 26.1 docs for Cloud" is partially related to the changeset but overly broad and not specific about the main change.	Revise the title to be more specific about the primary change, such as "Add leader pinning ordered rack preference documentation" or "Document leader pinning configuration improvements."

✅ Passed checks (1 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check.

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✨ Finishing Touches

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Commit unit tests in branch 26.1

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[coderabbitai]

Actionable comments posted: 1

🤖 Prompt for all review comments with AI agents

Verify each finding against the current code and only fix it if needed.

Inline comments:
In `@modules/get-started/pages/whats-new-cloud.adoc`:
- Line 13: The sentence describing Leader pinning's ordered_racks is too
absolute; update the wording around the `ordered_racks` behavior (and related
mention of `racks`/Leader pinning) to avoid "only" failover language—replace the
clause “fails over to subsequent racks only when higher-priority racks become
unavailable” with a softer phrasing such as “typically fails over to subsequent
racks when higher-priority racks are unavailable or cannot be selected” (or
similar) to reflect caveats on the detailed page.

🪄 Autofix (Beta)

Fix all unresolved CodeRabbit comments on this PR:

• Push a commit to this branch (recommended)
• Create a new PR with the fixes

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ℹ️ Review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Organization UI

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro

Run ID: f9a672e8-8dd2-48a8-a244-477274c1406e

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 2d6250b and d3995f3.

📒 Files selected for processing (2)

• modules/develop/pages/produce-data/leader-pinning.adoc
• modules/get-started/pages/whats-new-cloud.adoc

[coderabbitai]

⚠️ Potential issue | 🟡 Minor

Avoid absolute failover wording that may overstate behavior.

The phrase “fails over … only when higher-priority racks become unavailable” is likely too absolute. Consider softer wording (for example, “typically” / “when higher-priority racks are unavailable or cannot be selected”) to stay consistent with the detailed page’s caveats.

Suggested wording tweak

-xref:develop:produce-data/leader-pinning.adoc[Leader pinning] now supports the `ordered_racks` configuration value, which lets you specify preferred racks in priority order. Unlike `racks`, which distributes leaders uniformly across all listed racks, `ordered_racks` places leaders in the highest-priority available rack and fails over to subsequent racks only when higher-priority racks become unavailable.
+xref:develop:produce-data/leader-pinning.adoc[Leader pinning] now supports the `ordered_racks` configuration value, which lets you specify preferred racks in priority order. Unlike `racks`, which distributes leaders uniformly across all listed racks, `ordered_racks` places leaders in the highest-priority available rack and can fail over to subsequent racks when higher-priority racks are unavailable or cannot be selected.

📝 Committable suggestion

‼️ IMPORTANT
Carefully review the code before committing. Ensure that it accurately replaces the highlighted code, contains no missing lines, and has no issues with indentation. Thoroughly test & benchmark the code to ensure it meets the requirements.

Suggested change

xref:develop:produce-data/leader-pinning.adoc[Leader pinning] now supports the `ordered_racks` configuration value, which lets you specify preferred racks in priority order. Unlike `racks`, which distributes leaders uniformly across all listed racks, `ordered_racks` places leaders in the highest-priority available rack and fails over to subsequent racks only when higher-priority racks become unavailable.

xref:develop:produce-data/leader-pinning.adoc[Leader pinning] now supports the `ordered_racks` configuration value, which lets you specify preferred racks in priority order. Unlike `racks`, which distributes leaders uniformly across all listed racks, `ordered_racks` places leaders in the highest-priority available rack and can fail over to subsequent racks when higher-priority racks are unavailable or cannot be selected.

🤖 Prompt for AI Agents

Verify each finding against the current code and only fix it if needed.

In `@modules/get-started/pages/whats-new-cloud.adoc` at line 13, The sentence
describing Leader pinning's ordered_racks is too absolute; update the wording
around the `ordered_racks` behavior (and related mention of `racks`/Leader
pinning) to avoid "only" failover language—replace the clause “fails over to
subsequent racks only when higher-priority racks become unavailable” with a
softer phrasing such as “typically fails over to subsequent racks when
higher-priority racks are unavailable or cannot be selected” (or similar) to
reflect caveats on the detailed page.