Technology•May 22, 2019

DataStax Constellation: A Quick Technical Rundown

We’re excited to announce DataStax Constellation, our new cloud platform that’s designed to bring a whole new level of sophistication and capabilities to the Database as a Service (DBaaS) market in a very cost-effective manner.

Constellation is a major addition to our already available powerful set of cloud capabilities and solutions. And while it’s true that other DBaaS offerings have been on the market for a while now, Constellation makes them look like a Blackberry to our iPhone.

What Is Constellation?

Constellation is a cloud platform that delivers a number of services designed to make building modern database applications in the cloud quick, simple, and cost effective. The first two services in Constellation are DataStax Apache Cassandra as a Service and DataStax Insights.

Our three goals with the initial release of Constellation are to (1) simplify Cassandra deployments and management, (2) accelerate cloud application development with auto-configured developer tooling, (3) provide fast and smart problem identification/resolution with our next-generation performance optimization solution.

As to cloud vendor support, Constellation will first support Google Cloud Platform, then Amazon Web Services, followed by Microsoft Azure.

Why DataStax in the Cloud

There’s a reason why over 60% of our customers run our software in the cloud today, with two-thirds saying they’ll be in the cloud with us in the next 6 to 12 months. It’s the same reason we get gasps from attendees at our Developer Day events when we show off our multi-cloud demo.

No other database can do what we do in the cloud.

This is because our database platform is built on the proven open source foundation of Apache Cassandra® and paired with advanced functionality that modern enterprises need. The powerful combination of Cassandra’s unique masterless architecture and DataStax’s enterprise feature set delivers the speed, constant uptime, transparent data distribution, security, and scale that brings to life everything a cloud database is meant to be.

With Constellation, this fact becomes even more “easy and obvious” to understand.

DataStax Apache Cassandra as a Service

The cornerstone service of Constellation is our own DataStax Apache Cassandra as a Service, which leapfrogs all currently existing as-a-service Cassandra offerings on the market. Whether it’s processing ecommerce transactions, performing product searches, or ingesting IoT data from billions of devices, no other DBaaS will do it faster than Constellation’s DataStax Apache Cassandra as a Service.

Further, no Cassandra as a Service is more secure than what we have in Constellation. Whether it’s advanced authentication and authorization, object permission management, data encryption (on disk and network), role-based access control, data auditing, row-level access control, enterprise-secured drivers, etc., all the bases are covered when it comes to data protection.

Constellation’s DataStax Apache Cassandra as a Service is also the most sophisticated when it comes to auto-management and self-healing functionality. Smart backups, transparent repair operations, automated traffic governance, and more all exist in DataStax Apache Cassandra as a Service.

Accelerated Cloud Development

Developers will love how Constellation’s DataStax Apache Cassandra as a Service makes application development fast and easy. From within Constellation’s cloud console, a developer can, with one click, be taken to a web-hosted version of DataStax Studio and start coding right away.

For those wanting to do traditional development on their laptops, a single click in the web console will download a personalized set of cloud developer tools and utilities that are automatically secured and configured to allow for bulk loading, query management, and application development with their favorite development languages.

Performance Insights

In addition to DataStax Apache Cassandra as a Service we’re pleased to announce DataStax Insights, which is our next-generation performance management and optimization solution. Our own support team will begin using Insights to assist Constellation DataStax Apache Cassandra as a Service customers, and shortly thereafter, Insights will be available for customers to utilize for their DataStax Apache Cassandra as a Service clusters and then on-premises DataStax deployments. This is especially key for customers who want a single view of their hybrid cloud deployments.

Three things make Insights stand out from among existing DBaaS performance tools. First is its coverage for both cloud and on-premises deployments.

Next is its productivity-increasing mechanisms for communicating where busy admins and operators need to spend their time. For example, Insight’s Health Index conveys, with a single measurement, the overall well-being of every cluster being monitored. Administrators—whether novices or experts—immediately know which clusters require their attention and which are already optimized.

Third, Insights uses AI-powered capabilities to learn what’s normal and abnormal for each particular cluster and customizes recommendations for improvements based on that learning.

What about Cost?

All this functionality is awesome, but we knew that we needed to price Constellation services properly to be competitive. The great thing is, our DataStax Apache Cassandra as a Service is so much more resource-efficient than other DBaaS offerings that oftentimes fewer resources are required for the same workload.

To test this claim, we benchmarked DataStax Apache Cassandra as a Service against a top NoSQL DBaaS with an IoT workload. The end result was that DataStax Apache Cassandra as a Service cost 38% less for read workloads and 84% less for write-intensive workloads. Not bad!

Give Constellation a Try

With the introduction of Constellation, we now have all the bases covered when it comes to deployment flexibility, both on-premises and in the cloud. Whether you’re a do-it-yourselfer in the cloud, someone who wants to use DataStax software in a cloud marketplace, looking for a completely managed service in the cloud, or you’re needing to deploy a TCO-friendly and superhero styled DBaaS in the cloud, DataStax has what you need.

We have more information on Constellation waiting for you on our website, so be sure to check out everything we have available now.