March 2021 Summaries

The "Cassandra Total Cost of Ownership Study" reveals that serverless Cassandra is significantly less expensive than self-managed OSS Cassandra, with a cost difference of $740,087 versus $3,174,938 over three years. The study includes dedicated compute hardware, cost per read and write operation, storage growth, and people costs in the TCO calculations. It also establishes a realistic performance test using NoSQLBench for serverless Cassandra pricing and determines the configuration of the OSS platform. The results show that serverless Cassandra is 75% less expensive than self-managed Cassandra, with 95% fewer production costs, 3x less complexity, and 44% lower operational costs. This test validates the immense value of serverless Cassandra for a Cassandra deployment in an enterprise project, offering significant reduction in deployment time and costs over self-managed Cassandra workloads.

The report "Cassandra Total Cost of Ownership Study" reveals that serverless Cassandra is significantly less expensive than self-managed Cassandra, with a cost difference of $740,087 versus $3,174,938 over three years. This study includes dedicated compute hardware, cost per read and write operation, storage growth, and people costs in the TCO calculations. The results show that serverless Cassandra is 75% less expensive than self-managed Cassandra, with 95% fewer production costs, 3x less complexity, and 44% lower operational costs. This test proves the immense value of serverless Cassandra for a Cassandra deployment in an enterprise project, offering significant reduction in deployment time and costs over self-managed Cassandra workloads.

K8ssandra, an open-source solution for deploying Apache Cassandra on Kubernetes, has released enterprise support via DataStax Luna. The project aims to simplify the DevOps experience when working with stateful distributed databases on Kubernetes by automating the setup and management of all necessary components. Key features include cass-operator, Medusa for backup and restore, Reaper for repair tasks, Prometheus and Grafana for monitoring, and Stargate for data API gateway. Enterprise support is now available through DataStax Luna, offering access to expert assistance and best practices for K8ssandra users.

The recent Luna Streaming release by DataStax includes a distribution of Apache Pulsar, an open-source distributed messaging and streaming platform that is simple to deploy using Kubernetes. However, for users who are not ready to dive into installing Kubernetes from scratch, Replicated offers a toolset to streamline the distribution and management of third-party applications. By leveraging two projects from Replicated - kURL and KOTS - Luna Streaming allows on-premise users to run Apache Pulsar Helm chart with valuable add-on pieces. The separation of kURL (Kubernetes layer) and KOTS (application layer) enables developers to iterate on test versions without re-installing the entire package, saving significant development time.

The recent Luna Streaming release by DataStax includes a distribution of Apache Pulsar, an open-source distributed messaging and streaming platform that is simple to deploy using Kubernetes. However, for users who are not ready to dive into installing Kubernetes from scratch, Replicated offers a toolset to streamline the distribution and management of third-party applications. By leveraging kURL and KOTS projects from Replicated, Luna Streaming allows on-premise users to run Apache Pulsar Helm chart with valuable add-on pieces. This makes it easy for users who are already running Kubernetes in the cloud or on-premise, as well as those who haven't adopted Kubernetes yet.

K8ssandra, an open-source solution for deploying Apache Cassandra on Kubernetes, has reached the level of enterprise support with the release of version 1.0.0 via DataStax Luna. The project simplifies the experience of working with a distributed stateful database on Kubernetes by automating the setup and management of all necessary components. Key features include cass-operator for managing Cassandra, Medusa for backup and restore, Reaper for repairing issues, Prometheus and Grafana for monitoring, and Stargate for providing REST, GraphQL, and document APIs. Enterprise support is now available through DataStax Luna, which provides access to expert assistance and best practices for K8ssandra users.

DataStax has developed a powerful Pulsar Sink Connector that enables users to connect data streams from Apache Pulsar™ to Cassandra, leveraging the same power and flexibility as their Kafka connector. The Messaging Connectors Commons framework was created by extracting common business logic from the Kafka Sink, allowing for easy implementation of relevant APIs within the Pulsar Sink framework. This new sink supports schema information management and offers various features such as batching strategies and dynamic building of schemas. It is compatible with Apache Cassandra, Datastax Enterprise (DSE), and Astra, ensuring 100% compatibility across different versions. Users can map multiple topics to multiple tables and configure different mappings for each pair. The Sink automatically handles conversions and efficient writing to Cassandra.

DataStax has developed a powerful Pulsar Sink Connector that enables users to connect data streams from Apache Pulsar™ to Cassandra, leveraging the same power and flexibility as their Kafka connector. The Messaging Connectors Commons framework was created by extracting common business logic from the Kafka Sink, allowing for easy implementation of relevant APIs within the Pulsar Sink framework. This new sink supports schema information management, mapping existing Pulsar schemas to Cassandra table schemas, and offers flexibility in mapping source data to Cassandra tables. The Pulsar Sink works well with Apache Cassandra, Datastax Enterprise (DSE), and Astra, ensuring full compatibility across various versions of these platforms.

Last week, we announced that Stargate, our new data gateway (open-source API framework), is now available on the cloud database Astra by DataStax, on DataStax Enterprise and can be downloaded for free. As a result, developers worldwide can now create modern data applications using their favorite APIs. What do we mean by modern data applications? Any application requiring massive amounts of data, 100% up-time, delivered through APIs, providing rich interactions (AI/ML, IoT, Web, Mobile, Social, Gaming, microService, etc.). Stargate will help millions of full-stack developers work with any form of data or type of data storage they desire. Developers can now use their choice of APIs; such as API Schemaless JSON, GraphQL and REST; to create fast and large-scale applications. We are thrilled to have engineers and developers from Netflix, Burberry, Macquarie Bank, USAA, and Yelp developing Stargate with us. They are already working hard to test the APIs and collaborate on new features. To help developers succeed quickly using Stargate, we have published a wealth of useful content that you can check out. We also have practical tutorials on Datastax.com/dev for using Stargate's REST, Document, and GraphQL APIs. Check them out and let us know what you think. For more information about Astra + Stargate and how to use it to create powerful applications faster with your preferred tools, check this out.

Apache Cassandra is a highly scalable database known for its write latency and throughput. However, scaling down can be challenging due to the need to scale both compute and storage simultaneously. To address this issue, DataStax developed Astra, a serverless version of Cassandra that separates compute and storage, allowing users to pay only for operations they consume and data stored or transmitted. This approach leads to more efficient operations and significant cost savings. Astra also supports external JWT token providers, simplifying user management, authentication, and authorization logic in applications. The serverless version of Cassandra is built on Kubernetes, which enables dynamic scalability and improved performance. DataStax plans to continue optimizing Astra for better performance, scalability, and cost-effectiveness while proposing the changes made into the Apache Cassandra project as part of the CEP process.

The latest release of DataStax Astra introduces new pricing plans and simplifies database creation, allowing users to create a serverless database in one step. Users can start with the "Pay as you Go" plan which offers $25 worth of free usage per month. New features include a dashboard displaying total usage across all databases, an Organization Settings page for managing teams and custom roles, and enhanced Identity and Access Management (IAM) controls. Additionally, users can now create Application Tokens for granular access to resources. Billing has been updated to show costs broken down by individual databases.

The latest release of DataStax Astra introduces new pricing plans and simplifies database creation, allowing users to create a serverless database in one step. Users can start with the "Pay as you Go" plan which offers $25 worth of free credits per month for usage. New features include an updated dashboard displaying total usage across all serverless databases, plan information, and estimated billing. Classic tier A, C, or D databases are now displayed in a separate table with their own billing details. Organization Management has been improved with the addition of "Organization Settings" for team invites, custom roles creation, and billing information updates. Identity and Access Management (IAM) has been updated to provide more control over access to resources, including a new custom role builder and authentication method called Application Tokens. Billing now displays estimated costs broken down by individual databases.

Apache Cassandra is a highly scalable database known for its write latency and throughput. However, it faces challenges when scaling down due to the need to scale both compute and storage simultaneously. To address this issue, DataStax developed Astra, a serverless version of Cassandra that separates compute and storage, allowing users to pay only for operations they consume and data stored or transmitted. This approach leads to significant cost savings and improved efficiency. Astra also supports external JWT token providers, simplifying user management, authentication, and authorization logic in applications. The serverless version of Cassandra is built on Kubernetes, which provides native integrations for dynamic scalability and leverages etcd for consistent metadata across nodes. DataStax plans to continue optimizing Astra's performance, scalability, and cost-effectiveness while proposing the changes made into the Apache Cassandra project as part of the CEP process.

Rust has gained popularity due to its combination of C++ level runtime performance, low resource requirements, powerful control over details, strong correctness, and safety features. It is particularly useful for developing Cassandra apps as it protects from a wide class of bugs that programmers could make when writing parallel or concurrent code. Several Rust drivers are available to help build Cassandra apps, including the DataStax C++ Driver with Rust bindings, CDRS, and ScyllaDB driver. The most feature-complete and battle-tested driver is currently the DataStax C++ Driver with Rust bindings, which offers a wide range of features but requires installation of third-party C++ libraries. CDRS is a pure-Rust driver that is easy to install but has a more verbose API and some rough edges. ScyllaDB driver is a new option that shows great potential but is currently limited in features.

Rust has seen significant growth in popularity due to its combination of C++ level runtime performance, low resource requirements, powerful control over details, strong correctness, and safety features. It is particularly useful for developing concurrent or parallel code, which can be challenging to debug. Apache Cassandra requires massively parallel code to achieve optimal power, making Rust a suitable choice for building Cassandra applications. Several Rust drivers are available to assist in this process, including the DataStax C++ Driver with Rust bindings, CDRS, and ScyllaDB driver. The DataStax C++ Driver is currently the most feature-complete and battle-tested option, while CDRS offers a pure-Rust alternative with an async API. ScyllaDB driver is in early development but shows great potential for future growth.