DataStax Expands Cassandra Support for Kubernetes Distros

DataStax, at the online KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2021 event, announced it will now support the deployment of its distribution of the open source Apache Cassandra database on any distribution of Kubernetes.

In addition, K8ssandra, an instance of Apache Cassandra optimized for Kubernetes, now comes with integrations for Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).

Apache Casandra is a so-called NoSQL database based on a wide-columnar store optimized to process large amounts of data across a distributed cluster. The instance of the database launched last year by DataStax comes with a cass-operator that makes it easier to deploy on a Kubernetes cluster. There’s also a Cassandra Operations on Kubernetes certification program to help database administrators (DBAs) evolve into site reliability engineers (SREs).

Patrick McFadin, vice president of developer relations at DataStax, says that as the amount of data showing up on Kubernetes clusters continues to increase, there exists a need for a database capable of processing massive amounts of data.

At the same time, IT teams are moving toward employing Kubernetes and portable databases as the foundational elements of rapidly evolving hybrid cloud computing strategies. As that transition occurs, IT teams are regaining control over their cloud computing environments, noted McFadin.

It’s not clear to what degree of control those IT teams eventually will achieve. There’s no doubt IT teams will be able to exercise more control over contracts prior to deciding to deploy a workload. However, once a workload is deployed it could remain challenging to shift a workload to another cloud, once an organization starts making use of some of the proprietary application programming interfaces (APIs) that cloud service providers expose. In some cases, cloud service providers also offer database services that run only on their specific platforms.

It may be a while before organizations move beyond managing multiple clouds to embrace true hybrid cloud computing, but the pressure is mounting as multiple centers of data gravity starting to emerge both in the cloud and in on-premises IT environments. Most of those centers of data gravity are already employing a wide range of databases. DataStax has been making a case for employing Cassandra much earlier in the application life cycle because replacing a database as an application scales can be a Herculean effort. DataStax has also made available an instance of Cassandra based on a microservices architecture that can be invoked via a serverless computing framework to make the database more accessible.

Most organizations are a lot more comfortable employing multiple types of databases today than they were a few short years ago. Rather than standardizing on one or two databases across an enterprise, developers are frequently deciding what database to employ based on application requirements and personal preference. Less clear is to what degree developers are managing those databases once they are deployed in a production environment.

In the meantime, the amount of data that needs to be accessed via applications running on Kubernetes undoubtedly will continue to grow at a faster rate than most enterprise IT teams currently appreciate.

Mike Vizard

Mike Vizard is a seasoned IT journalist with over 25 years of experience. He also contributed to IT Business Edge, Channel Insider, Baseline and a variety of other IT titles. Previously, Vizard was the editorial director for Ziff-Davis Enterprise as well as Editor-in-Chief for CRN and InfoWorld.

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