January 2017 Summaries

Shared storage is not recommended for Apache Cassandra due to two main reasons: performance issues and single point of failure. Performance in Cassandra is directly correlated to the performance of a node's disk system, and shared storage devices may struggle with the high IOPS and throughput demands from Cassandra operations such as writes, reads, compaction, repair, and bootstrap. Additionally, using shared storage introduces a single point of failure into the architecture, which can be detrimental to the overall performance and stability of the system.

In the latest version of DataStax drivers, support for promises has been added while continuing to support callback-based execution. Promises offer several advantages over callbacks, such as chaining using the built-in then() method and compatibility with modern JavaScript features like async functions and generator functions. The new API does not introduce breaking changes to existing functionality. Additionally, the drivers now use MonotonicTimestampGenerator by default for generating request timestamps and support defining whether a query is safe for multiple applications without changing the result beyond the initial application. Synchronous iteration of rows using the new for...of statement in ES2015 has also been added to the ResultSet prototype. The latest versions of DataStax drivers are available on npm: dse-driver and cassandra-driver.

DataStax has announced supported Docker images for all components of its DataStax Enterprise (DSE) data platform. These images will be released in phases, with the first phase aimed at supporting developers in evaluation environments only. Three Docker images are currently available for non-production use: dse-server, dse-studio, and dse-opscenterserver. DataStax is also providing a simple mechanism to change or modify configurations without replacing or customizing the containers. Users can add approved config files to a mounted host volume, and DataStax will handle the mapping within the container. The company plans to hold office hours over the next few weeks to answer questions and gather feedback.