DSE and Docker: From Development to Production

Abraham Lincoln said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four hours sharpening the axe.”

For Docker images, DataStax has spent years sharpening Lincoln’s axe, and today we  have officially launched production-ready Docker images for DataStax Enterprise (DSE), Studio, and OpsCenter. We’re also providing access to our GitHub repo for any customers needing to further customize the images.

The Docker Demand

There’s no doubt that containers are now a key technology in the IT professional’s arsenal, and at DataStax we’ve seen tremendous momentum in customers using them in conjunction with our database platform.

The use of Dockerized DSE has doubled in just two short years, which is telling. Naturally this means that we need to ensure everything is rock solid when it comes to deploying DSE and Docker.

The DataStax Answer for Docker

DSE users have been able to build their own production-supported Docker Images since 2015 and have been able to use DataStax’s own developer-friendly non-production images since 2017.

Since the non-production release, we have been collecting feedback, which we have used in the enhancements made in our production images. You have been battle-testing in your environments and we have been doing the same in-house. We are excited to say they are now, officially, production ready.

The DataStax Docker images are the foundation of many of our training courses and for the full KILLRVIDEO application stack.

What Makes DataStax Docker Images Special?

Enterprise customers expect an enterprise experience, and we’ve taken steps to provide an increased ease of use for configuration management that was previously unavailable.

We accomplished this with:

1. Environment variables for common configs
2. The ability to disable auto-configured environment variables
3. Config volume for extensive custom configurations

There are multiple config options, but by using the DSE config volume, you can easily add any of the approved config files to a single mounted host volume and we’ll magically map them within the container.

We’ve also added the ability to disable autoconfigured environmental variables so you can set all values using your custom config files.

How to Get Started

There’s more we’d like to say but we know you’re anxious to get started.

Here’s how:

• Pull the images: DataStax Enterprise, DSE Studio, and DSE OpsCenter
• Check out the DataStax Docker Docs
• Check out the GitHub Repo
• Get started with a step-by-step tutorial on DataStax Academy