Why Use Cassandra as a Service?
Cassandra is one of the most popular wide-column open-source distributed database management systems. It is built to manage large volumes of data distributed across several servers. The highly scalable database management system is designed to deliver great performance on multi-node setups.
Cassandra’s architecture makes it an ideal platform for cloud hosting. Consequently, many enterprises are switching from commodity hardware to cloud infrastructure for their diverse workloads for better scalability and fault tolerance. In this article, let us explore how enterprises can take advantage of Cassandra as a service for their mission-critical workloads.
What Are the Challenges with On-Premises Cassandra Servers?
Although Cassandra is one of the most popular NoSQL Databases, it is also difficult to set up and manage. Here are some typical challenges that Cassandra users face.
- When users delete data, it is not immediately purged from the disk. Instead, a special value called tombstone is used as a marker to indicate that the data was deleted. While the default for which data is marked with a tombstone is 10 days, in some circumstances, it is ineligible for garbage collection for much longer periods, affecting the performance of commodity hardware.
- The performance of Cassandra nodes depends on several factors, such as network connectivity, hardware specs, data streams, and schemas. Poor management can often result in cluster failure.
- In some cases, capacity planning can become tricky when the database grows rapidly. There can be latency issues when the hardware is unable to handle the volume of triggers.
What Are the Typical Uses of Cloud-Based Cassandra Databases?
Cassandra cloud databases are ideal for applications that need speed, scalability, and reliability. Here are some use cases for using cloud-based Cassandra databases.
- Cloud-based Cassandra databases are ideal for storing time-series data, such as log files from cloud applications. For such instances, it is often easier to create a new version than update old content.
- Large enterprises can use cloud-based Cassandra databases for storing geographically distributed data. As there are no master nodes, local Cassandra clusters can store data using commodity storage.
- Businesses with high network costs can switch to cloud-based Cassandra, as it does not have to send data to distant master nodes.
What Are the Advantages of Using Cassandra as A Service?
Switching to cloud-native Cassandra as a service simplifies application development and helps in building modern data apps faster. Here are some of the advantages of switching to Cassandra as a service from on-premises servers.
- Cassandra as a service is available as a fully managed database that simplifies operations by minimizing the overheads involved in setup, upgrades, and scaling.
- Enterprise-grade security features are integrated by default, and admins do not have to manage the security.
- Enterprises can take full advantage of Cassandra’s scalability when they must handle bursting workloads or increasing sizes of their clusters.
- There is typically lower latency and higher throughput with Cassandra as a service than with commodity hardware.
- Instances and configurations are optimized for reliability, performance, and security so that developers can focus on their applications rather than the infrastructure.
Apps4Rent Can Help with Managed Cassandra Database
Many organizations have organically adopted Cassandra on an ad-hoc basis. Such deployments often have several clusters that are not equally well maintained, resulting in a fragmented view and usage of the deployments. These deployments can be vulnerable to attacks as updates, security patches, and bug fixes may not have been applied across the instances.
Apps4Rent provides managed Cassandra as a service for organizations to take full advantage of the open-source application with minimal risks. Additionally, as a Tier 1 Microsoft CSP, we can also provide customized Cassandra solutions on Azure for greater flexibility, scalability, and security. Contact our Cassandra virtualization experts, available 24/7 via phone, chat, and email for assistance.