Astra DB FAQs

While you can run DataStax Enterprise (DSE) both on premises and in the cloud, Astra DB allows you to create databases in minutes, with reduced complexity, fewer operational concerns, and an approachable entry point for developing your applications. Astra DB is a true database-as-a-service (DBaaS) offering that provides simplified cluster management with flexible pricing. DSE also includes Advanced Workloads (DSE Search, Analytics, and Graph), which are not available in Astra DB. Read this whitepaper for an in-depth understanding of the cloud-native architecture of Astra DB.

Apache Cassandra version 3.11 is compatible with Astra DB databases.

Astra DB supports creating databases on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure.

Recent Resources includes the five most recent databases and streaming tenants resources used by someone in your organization.

Each of the supported DSE and Apache Cassandra drivers is compatible. Choose the DataStax driver for your preferred language and configure it to connect to your Astra DB database. See Connecting to Astra DB databases using DataStax drivers.

Astra DB handles billing through an integration with Stripe, and displays all related billing information on the Billing Summary page. Enter a credit card number and associated billing information to begin creating Astra DB databases. See Billing for more information.

You are prompted to add a credit card when your credit limit is running low. You also receive this notification by email and in Astra Portal.

If your application uses all $25 in credit, the database temporarily pauses until you add a credit card to re-start the database. Alternatively, you can wait until the next month for the $25 credit to reload.

Unused credits do not rollover. A $25 credit is added to your organization on the 1st of every month.

View your credit balance in the Dashboard:

While logged in to Astra, view the URL:

astra.datastax.com/{organization_id}

Navigate to your database dashboard:

astra.datastax.com/org/{organization_id}/database/{database_id}

Alternatively, you can view your Database ID in the Databases listing on the Astra DB dashboard. Use the clipboard icon to copy the ID.

If you need the Datacenter ID (or IDs, if you have a multi-region database), click the database name to see its details and to locate the ID of each datacenter next to its name in the list.

Select your current database on the left panel. Navigate to the CQL console tab.

Here, you can run CQL commands. These are a few to test out

Keyspaces need to be created in Astra Portal. Navigate to the Dashboard overview and select Add Keyspace.

We do not allow users to delete the last keyspace to avoid accidental deletion of data. This is the error you will see in the CQL shell:

To avoid any storage costs associated with the keyspace, you can drop tables from the keyspace by running:

There is no practical limit to the number of bytes an Astra DB database can store.

A permission error occurs for two reasons.

The first reason is that Astra places certain limitations on the user with Astra DB database guardrails and limits.

The second reason is that you don’t have the appropriate permissions on your account. Learn more information about user permissions.

This is the error: Invalid Request: Error from server: code=2200 [Invalid query] message="table {table_name} does not exist"

When you upload a table through Astra Portal, any table name, keyspace name, or column name with case-sensitive characters can be accessed by using double quotes.

For example, see the select statement below:

Check the YouTube description for the Workshop you attended. Use the Discord group or the YouTube chat to ask questions.

Additional links:

You can find sample projects in our Sample App Gallery located on the left hand side of your Astra dashboard or the Github Repository.

Additionally, you can follow along to video tutorials on our DataStax Developers YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/c/DataStaxDevs

Open your Astra Portal, select the Help Center. A panel for Health Center appears on the right side of the screen.

On the bottom right hand corner, select Submit a Ticket. You are redirected to the DataStax Support portal.

Select Submit a Request at the top. You must complete the fields marked with an asterisk. When finished, select Create.

For more, see Get support for Astra DB.

No, you cannot alter the keyspace name. You can create an entire new keyspace with a different name.

If the file is over 40 MB, you can upload data with our DSBulk Loader. For more, see how to get started with DSBulk Loader.

No, Astra is a zero-operations database-as-a-service (DBaaS) offering. Some operational Cassandra tools are not relevant. We offer access to a limited set of database metrics. You can view them in the Health tab in Astra Portal.

For more, see the Astra DB database guardrails and limits.

If you are using strict security settings in your web browser, you might not see everything in Astra Portal, such as messages and certainly functionalities that simplify your experience.

There are several places to get help:

Astra DB supports single-region and multi-region deployments. The available classic regions vary based on the selected cloud provider and more are added over time. Within a region, data is replicated across three availability zones to ensure high availability.

VPC peering is available on only Classic C- and D-tier Astra DB databases. For more, see AWS VPC peering, GCP VPC peering, and Azure.

Pricing for DataStax Astra classic databases is based on plan, units of measure, cloud provider, and region. See Pricing for more information.

The port range is 29000-32767.

APIs such as REST and GraphQL, and the Astra DB Health dashboard: 443.

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