Frequently asked questions about Astra DB Serverless

If your browser doesn’t render the Astra Portal as expected, do the following:

See also:

In the Astra Portal, click Search Astra or press Control+K (or Command+K on macOS) to open the command palette, and then enter your search query.

The command palette can help you find Astra functionality and resources in your Astra organization:

The context of the search is based on your active organization and user role. If you belong to multiple organizations, you must switch your active organization to search another organization.

See Get an organization ID.

See Get your database ID.

See Get a database’s datacenter ID.

You can create Astra DB Serverless databases on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. For specific regions available for each cloud vendor, see Astra DB Serverless database regions and maintenance schedules.

For Astra organizations on the Free plan, databases are suspended if your monthly credits run out. While suspended, you cannot access the data in the database.

To reactivate a Suspended database, you must provide a payment method or wait for your free monthly credits to refresh. For more information, see Astra DB Serverless billing and usage.

Once reactivated, you can resume database operations and access the data in the database.

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

No, you cannot change the name of a keyspace. Instead, you can create a new keyspace with a different name, and then reload your data to the new keyspace.

For the regional maintenance schedules, see Astra DB Serverless database regions and maintenance schedules.

To subscribe to Astra regional maintenance status notifications, go to Astra Regional Maintenance Status, and then click Subscribe To Updates.

If you don’t receive the notification emails, check your spam folder and make sure your allowed contacts include noreply@statuspage.io and noreply=statuspage.io@notifications.statuspage.io.

To check the status and health of your databases, see View and export metrics and Database statuses.

For information about database usage and billing, see Astra DB Serverless billing and usage.

No. Because Astra DB Serverless is a zero-operations database-as-a-service (DBaaS) offering, some operational Apache Cassandra® tools are not relevant. For more information, see Database limits.

For monitoring purposes, Astra DB Serverless offers access to a limited set of database metrics that you can view in the Astra Portal or export to third-party metrics services. For more information, see View and export metrics.

Storage Attached Indexing (SAI) is one of the indexing techniques used by Astra DB. For more information, see About vector databases: Indexing.

See Connect to a database.

See databases:connection-methods-comparison.adoc#drivers.

For CSV files larger than 40MB, use the DataStax Bulk Loader (DSBulk).

cqlsh is a command line tool that you can use to interact with your Astra DB databases. For more information, see Cassandra Query Language (CQL) for Astra DB.

Astra DB doesn’t support the CQL CREATE KEYSPACE command.

To create keyspaces in Astra DB Serverless databases, you can use the Astra Portal, DevOps API, Data API clients, or Astra CLI. For more information, see Manage keyspaces.

After you create the keyspace, you can use CQL to manage tables and data within the keyspace.

Astra DB doesn’t support the CQL DROP KEYSPACE command.

To delete keyspaces in Astra DB Serverless databases, you can use the Astra Portal, DevOps API, Data API clients, or Astra CLI. For more information, see Manage keyspaces.

When using CQL for Astra DB, you can encounter missing permissions errors such as the following:

Missing permissions errors can occur in the following circumstances:

The following error can occur when using CQL for Astra DB:

To troubleshoot this error, do the following:

For Astra organizations on the Free plan, databases are suspended if your monthly credits run out. While suspended, you cannot access the data in the database.

To reactivate a Suspended database, you must provide a payment method or wait for your free monthly credits to refresh. For more information, see Astra DB Serverless billing and usage.

Once reactivated, you can resume database operations and access the data in the database.

See Astra DB Serverless billing and usage.

DataStax is committed to data privacy and security. This commitment includes robust security measures and compliance standards, such as HIPAA, SOC2 Type 2, and ISO 27001.

For more information, see the DataStax Trust Center.

See Manage roles and permissions and Manage users.

If you need to make firewall exceptions, Astra DB Serverless uses the following ports:

VPC peering is not supported for Astra DB Serverless databases. Private endpoints are available.

To ensure you have the best experience with the Astra Portal, add Astra DB Serverless as an approved page for your ad blocker.

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

See also Why doesn’t the Astra Portal load correctly?.

A Secure Connect Bundle (SCB) is a zip file that contains connection details for an Astra DB Serverless database, such as certificates and keys.

For information about downloading and using SCBs, see Download and use a Secure Connect Bundle (SCB) with Astra DB Serverless.

If you use custom domains for your Astra DB databases, you must use the DevOps API to download SCBs for custom domains.

In the Astra Portal, you must select the specific region for the SCB.

With the DevOps API, you must include the all=true parameter to generate SCB download links for all regions.

For more information, see Download and use a Secure Connect Bundle (SCB) with Astra DB Serverless.

In addition to the Astra DB Serverless documentation, you can visit the DataStax Developers Discord or contact DataStax Support. For information about DataStax Support plans and contact options, see How do I contact DataStax Support?.

To browse help topics or submit a support ticket, visit the DataStax Support portal or use the live chat feature in the Astra Portal.

Additionally, you can schedule a support session for critical or sensitive situations that require direct attention, such as production system crashes, production system indefinite suspensions, and complete loss of service or inability to continue with regular operations for an unknown reason. To schedule a support session, do the following:

The level of support available to you depends on your subscription or support plan.

The Astra System Status dashboard shows daily incident and uptime history for the Astra platform.

To subscribe to Astra platform status notifications, click Subscribe To Updates.

If you don’t receive the notification emails, check your spam folder and make sure your allowed contacts include noreply@statuspage.io and noreply=statuspage.io@notifications.statuspage.io.

To check the status and health of your databases, see View and export metrics and Database statuses.

For information about database usage and billing, see Astra DB Serverless billing and usage.

See Astra DB Serverless maintenance schedule.