Astra DB release notes

DataStax Astra DB release notes provide information about new and improved features, known and resolved issues, and bug fixes.

05 December 2023

In a beta4 update to the JSON API public preview release, we enhanced the syntax of a few commands.

In the find command’s request that formerly included a $similarity clause, you should now use the includeSimilarity boolean in the options. A cURL example:
```
curl -s --location \
--request POST ${base_url}/api/json/v1/${ASTRA_DB_KEYSPACE}/${COLLECTION} \
--header "Token: ${ASTRA_DB_APPLICATION_TOKEN}" \
--header "Content-Type: application/json" \
--header "Accept: application/json" \
--data '{
  "find": {
    "sort" : {"$vector" : [0.15, 0.1, 0.1, 0.35, 0.55]},
    "projection" : {"$vector" : 1},
    "options" : {
        "includeSimilarity" : true,
        "limit" : 100
    }
  }
}' | json_pp
```
The includeSimilarity boolean was present in beta3. Starting with beta4, though, you cannot use $similarity in the request.

The find command’s response continues to show a $similarity score per document, assuming you set the request’s projection clause to {"$vector" : 1}. For examples of the updated request and response, see the Find sorted by $vector search, projection enabled, return similarity scores section of Developing with JSON API.
In the JSON API pagination examples, if the response of a find command has more than 20 documents, the cursor ID of the next page is shown in nextPageState. To load the next page’s document(s) in a subsequent find command, you should now use pageState. Previously, it was pagingState. For examples, see:
- Find pagination example to get first 20 documents on page 1
- Find pagination example to get more documents on page 2
In the header of JSON API commands, X-Cassandra-Token is now Token (as of beta3). The prior property name is supported for backwards compatibility. You can change to Token at any time. For examples, see the Headers tab of the JSON API commands in Postman, and the cURL examples in the JSON API command reference section of Developing with JSON API.
We enhanced the organization and content of the JSON API Postman collection and documentation topics:
Added an example and explanation of the ordered clause in the options of the insertMany command. See the JSON API command reference.

14 November 2023

Astra Portal offers a new vector database experience. To try it, click Enable Preview in the Astra Portal.

The new experience includes:

Python, TypeScript, and Java clients for Astra DB Serverless (Vector) databases.
New UIs for Database Metrics, Database Loader, and Database Explorer.
Enhanced documentation about the new vector experience.

Start in Astra Portal and see the Astra DB Serverless (Vector) documentation.

Existing users of the JSON API and Mongoose public preview can toggle between the existing and new experiences. In Astra Portal, use the Enable Preview or Disable Preview buttons in the top banner.

The New Vector Developer Experience and its DataStax Astra DB Serverless (Vector) documentation are currently in Public Preview. They are provided on an “AS IS” basis, without warranty or indemnity of any kind. For more, see the DataStax Preview Terms.

26 October 2023

In an update to the JSON API public preview release, we enhanced the syntax of a couple commands and added two logical operators:

createCollection vector options:
- The size clause is now called dimension.
- The function clause is now called metric.
findCollections option:
- Added an explain Boolean clause.
- When set to true, the command returns more information about collections in the database.
Added support for the $and and $or logical operators. For an example, see Find with $and $or to filter whether seller and customer match given values. The $and, $or operators are in addition to already supported operators: $in, $exists, $eq, $size, $all, $push, $pop, $inc, $set, $unset, $each, $position, $max, $min.

For full details about the JSON API, see:

The public preview release of JSON API is for development environments only; do not use this API in production.

19 September 2023

The new JSON API with Mongoose library integration is now available as a public preview release. You can use the JSON API to develop AI applications that interact with Astra DB Vector databases, including operations that perform vector similarity searches. JSON API is for development environments only; do not use this API in production. For more, see:

5 September 2023

Analyzers are now available. Using analyzers with vector search allows you to create a hybrid search that includes your keyword and a vector.

18 July 2023

Astra Vector Search is generally available. Astra DB supports Vector Search to aid in developing Generative AI and Machine Learning applications.

Changes to database creation accommodate new vector-enabled regions.
Removal of Public preview designation for serverless Astra databases with Vector Search.

26 June 2023

Updated Organization Settings simplify managing users, roles, tokens, billing, and security.

25 June 2023

Astra Portal supports adding Splunk, Pulsar/Streaming, or Datadog as a destination for exported Astra DB health metrics. Those destinations were already supported via the DevOps API. Additional destinations are provided. See Export metrics via Astra Portal.

22 June 2023

Added two caller modes in the Astra DB Plugin for HashiCorp Vault 2.0.0 release. For details about the standard and sidecar caller modes, and updated vault commands, see the plugin’s documentation in its GitHub repo.

07 June 2023

Astra Vector Search is in public preview for Astra DB Serverless. Astra Vector Search efficiently finds highly relevant and similar context in large language models (LLMs). Vector Search captures semantics in a way that eclipses term-based relevance methods. The Vector Search data can be read with CQL or cassIO.

Public Preview Feature

This is a Public Preview feature. This feature is provided according to your Astra agreement and is considered a part of the No-Fee License. This feature is not intended for production use, has not been certified for production workloads, and might contain bugs and other functional issues. There is no guarantee that a public preview feature will ever become generally available.

To learn more, see the Vector Search documentation or get started in the Astra Portal.

27 February 2023

Integrations are now embedded within the Astra Portal.
New guides are available to help you maximize how you use Astra DB:
You can now expand and collapse the left navigation.
The Astra Portal is now designed to also fit a tablet or laptop.

08 February 2023

Astra Block is now generally available for Astra DB serverless. Astra Block is a blockchain data service that offers real-time indexed blockchain data for building Web3 and decentralized applications (dapps). With Astra Block, you can stream a sanitized blockchain dataset into an Astra database in real-time.

In this release, Astra Block provides support for the Ethereum Mainnet blockchain. To get started, see Astra Block quickstart.

02 February 2023

Added Datadog as a supported destination of Astra DB Serverless database health metrics, via the DevOps v2 API. Exporting these metrics to Datadog is not supported via the Astra Portal at this time. For more, see Export metrics via DevOps API.

31 January 2023

Released DataStax ZDM Proxy Automation 2.2.0, which added the zdm_proxy_cluster_config.yml file to contain all the configuration variables for Origin and Target. Prior to version 2.2.0, the variables were in the zdm_proxy_core_config.yml file. The change is backward compatible. For more, see this ZDM topic.

24 January 2023

Released the DataStax Zero Downtime Migration Interactive Lab, which walks you through the process of migrating from any Cassandra/DSE/Astra DB database to another Cassandra/DSE/Astra DB database across clusters. See:

A fun way to learn: Zero Downtime Migration Interactive Lab, an introduction in the Migrating section of the Astra DB documentation.
https://www.datastax.com/dev/zdm, the start page of the Zero Downtime Migration Interactive Lab.

13 January 2023

DataStax Zero Downtime Migration (ZDM) has released version 2.1.0. By default, ZDM Proxy now sends heartbeats after 30 seconds of inactivity on a cluster connection. For details, start in the ZDM Release Notes and follow the links.

05 January 2023

Lightweight Transactions (LWTs) now support EACH_QUORUM and SERIAL consistency levels. For more, see Using multiple regions.

03 January 2023

DataStax Astra DB adds support on AWS for the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard 3.2.1 (PCI DSS).

To create and use DataStax Astra DB databases on AWS that comply with PCI DSS, please contact your Account Executive at DataStax or email sales@datastax.com.

14 December 2022

Published the Astra Command Line Interface (Astra CLI) 0.2 documentation. Astra CLI provides a one-stop shop for managing your Astra resources through scripts or commands in your local terminal. For more, see Astra CLI Overview.

05 December 2022

Added Splunk and Pulsar as supported destinations of Astra DB exported health metrics, via the DevOps API. See Export metrics via DevOps API.

10 November 2022

Released the General Availability (GA) version of Astra DB Plugin for HashiCorp Vault. The GA version includes new support for dynamic token management. See our Astra DB Plugin for HashiCorp Vault documentation in the plugin’s GitHub repo.

Specifically, you can:

Define a default lease time
Create new tokens with lease settings
List tokens by each one’s Client ID
View lease details
List all leases
Renew a lease
Revoke a token/lease before the lease expires
Delete a token

18 October 2022

Using DataStax Zero Downtime Migration (ZDM) 2.0 allows you to migrate to Astra DB from Apache Cassandra® and DataStax Enterprise (DSE). For example, you can use ZDM to migrate your client applications and data from Cassandra 3.11.x directly to cloud-native Astra DB. For other supported scenarios, see the ZDM introduction.

This suite of tools allows for zero downtime migration only if your database meets the minimum requirements. If your database does not meet these requirements, you can complete the migration from Origin to Target, but downtime might be necessary to finish the migration.

13 October 2022

Launched renamed, aggregated Astra DB health metrics. You can export these metrics to a third-party system such as Amazon CloudWatch, Kafka, and Prometheus, and use tools such as Grafana Cloud to visualize the metrics. For the specific metrics' descriptions, see Database health metrics forwarded by Astra DB.

21 July 2022

You can set up your custom DNS with a private endpoint for Azure and use your DNS entry to send traffic to the private endpoint.

24 May 2022

Launched a public beta of Astra DB Plugin for HashiCorp Vault. This open-source project adds robust token lifecycle management features for Astra DB. For details, see the documentation in the plugin’s GitHub repo. Also see this introductory video on the DataStax Developers YouTube channel.

18 May 2022

The Astra DB documentation is now organized by major user goals, including Planning, Securing, Managing, Connecting, and Developing.

16 May 2022

The Astra DB Metrics feature allows you to forward Astra DB database health metrics to an external third-party metrics system. See Export Astra DB metrics to a third party for details about:

DevOps v2 API functionality.
Support for Prometheus as a destination system.
Steps to visualize the exported Astra DB database health metrics in Grafana or Grafana Cloud.

04 May 2022

Support in Astra DB for additional supported regions, including ap-southeast-2 (Singapore), ap-northeast-1 (Tokyo), and eu-west-2 (London) for Astra DB Classic databases on AWS. For the full list, see Database regions. In Astra Portal, when you create an Astra DB database or click Add Region for an existing database, you’ll also see the supported regions list for each combination of Astra DB database type (Serverless or Classic) and cloud provider.

28 April 2022

In the per-organization Security Settings UI provided by Astra Portal, added support for Google Cloud based Astra DB databases. Allows you to associate a Customer Key in Astra Portal with an existing Customer Managed Encryption Key (CMEK) defined in Google Cloud console. For the full set of Bring Your Own Key topics, see:

18 April 2022

For AWS-based Astra DB databases, added per-organization Security Settings in Astra Portal. Allows you to associate a Customer Key in the Astra Portal with an existing Customer Managed Key defined in AWS Key Management Service. The new UI enhances the Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) feature already present via the Astra DB DevOps API for AWS and GCP.

07 April 2022

Launched a Private Preview of the Astra DB Metrics feature. See Export Astra DB metrics to a third party.

24 March 2022

CDC for Astra DB is now available. CDC for Astra DB automatically captures changes in real time, de-duplicates the changes, and streams the clean set of changed data into Astra Streaming where it can be processed by client applications or sent to downstream systems.

23 February 2022

Astra DB serverless support for new regions:

Google Cloud: West Europe2 (europe-west2) in London
Azure:
- Canada Central (canadacentral) in Toronto
- US East (eastus) in Virginia

14 February 2022

You can now remove a payment method from the pay as you go plan on Astra DB.

08 February 2022

You can configure single sign-on (SSO) to manage access to various applications. SSO allows for a seamless sign-on experience, and gives centralized and streamlined access control to security operations teams. Once configured, this security enhancement means that during a user’s next login attempt on DataStax Astra, the user is prompted to enter their company SSO credentials. If the credentials are valid, the authenticated user is logged into their DataStax Astra organization automatically.

01 February 2022

New Astra DB pricing went into effect on 01-Feb-2022. See the introductory information on Pricing and billing in the Astra DB documentation.

31 January 2022

The Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) feature is now Generally Available (GA) for AWS-based Astra DB databases. Contact DataStax Support to have a representative enable BYOK for your organization. See Bring Your Own Key for AWS, and the DevOps /v2/kms Customer Keys API reference.

11 January 2022

Participants in a private preview can use the Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) feature with their AWS-based Astra DB databases. See Bring Your Own Key for AWS.

07 January 2022

You can now load data into your Astra DB database from an Amazon S3 bucket that contains exported DynamoDB data in the Astra DB Data Loader.

06 January 2022

Added support for serverless Azure centralindia (Central India, Pune) region. For more, see Database regions.

09 November 2021

You can now define private endpoints for Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud in Astra Portal in addition to DevOps API calls that enable the same configurations. See your database’s Dashboard > Settings tab. See Connect via a private endpoint.

14 September 2021

You can now create multiple datacenters across regions for serverless databases.

02 September 2021

Private endpoints are available through the DevOps API for Google Cloud.
Added support for serverless AWS us-east-2 region. For more, see Database regions.

12 August 2021

Private endpoints are available through the DevOps API for Azure.

29 July 2021

Added support for serverless Google Cloud us-east-4 region. For more, see Database regions.

21 July 2021

Private endpoints are available through the DevOps API for AWS.

16 June 2021

Access lists are available to restrict public access to your serverless database.

11 June 2021

Added support for serverless Azure southcentralus region. For more, see Database regions.

24 May 2021

Backup and restore is now available on serverless databases.

14 May 2021

For serverless databases, increased:
- Size of values in a single column to 10 MB
- Maximum number of columns per table to 75
- Maximum number of SAI indexes to 50 per table or database
Added support for serverless Azure northeurope (Ireland) region.

03 May 2021

You can now manage your roles and tokens with the DevOps API.

15 April 2021

Moved Token Management under your Organization Settings.
Added getting started guides for granting a user access and loading and retrieving data in your database to the Astra DB documentation.
Serverless databases are now available on Azure. Added support for AWS us-west-2 and GCP us-west-1 regions. For more, see Database regions.
Serverless databases now support logged batches.

04 March 2021

Astra DB now offers a serverless database that is available on multiple cloud providers. For more, see Astra DB plan options.

Other improvements:

You can now manage your user permissions with Identity and Access Management and custom roles.
Application tokens simplify connecting to your database with the available APIs.

Additional changes:

Free and serverless (beta) databases were migrated to pay as you go plans with a $25 credit that renews each month.
Classic tiers can no longer be created in Astra Portal. We recommend migrating your database to our current serverless option, which could save you money and allow you to manage your compute and storage capabilities separately. Talk to us to start your migration.
Studio is no longer included in Astra DB.
Astra DB workloads are limited to 4096 ops/s/coordinator by default. If you see a "Rate limit reached" error in your application and want your limit raised, please open a support ticket.
Each element of a call to the Document API counts as a read or write, which can increase the number of reads and writes and affect your pricing. For example, 5,000 write requests/s with 11 fields means 55,000 op/s.

29 January 2021

Astra DB meets SOC 2 Type II security audit compliance.

09 December 2020

Stargate endpoints are available in all Astra DB databases created 9 December 2020 or later and in free Astra DB databases created 7 October 2020 or later. For more, see the Stargate REST API and schemaless Document API.
New Astra DB Data Loader simplifies how you can get data into your Astra DB database.

15 October 2020

New Astra DB plan options are available to provide you with options that allow you to weigh the costs and database capabilities for your Astra DB database.
You can now add multiple regions to your classic database.

29 September 2020

We’ve improved our user interface to make Astra DB easier for you. Check out your databases and our new resources in Astra DB.

18 September 2020

Use VPC peering to access your database on Azure and GCP. This feature is available for C- and D-tier classic databases.

28 August 2020

You can now create your Astra DB database with Microsoft Azure as your cloud provider.

33040d8 Screen Shot 2020 08 28 at 2.11.20 PM

Improvement: Added C-20, C-40, D-10, D-20, and D-40 database tiers. For more, see Service tier options.

31 July 2020

DevOps API simplifies creating and managing Astra DB databases To start using the DevOps API, create a service account for your organization. Use the service account secret to authenticate your service account and use the DevOps API.

Also, the Astra DB product documentation and the Astra DB API references are now hosted together at https://docs.datastax.com/en/astra/docs.

17 July 2020

Use VPC peering to access your database on AWS clusters VPC peering is available to access your Astra DB database from the AWS Console. This feature is available for only C10 databases on AWS.

Also, you can submit questions or feedback directly in Astra Portal using our new Chat feature.

10 July 2020

Manage Organizations is now listed under your databases menu. From the Manage Organizations screen, you can View Billing and View Users under the Action menu.

26 June 2020

New features:

Documentation help pane provides useful documentation links When you select Get Help a pane opens that provides links to helpful documentation for using your Astra DB database.

Improvements:

Check the status of Astra DB databases at https://status.astra.datastax.com.
Redesigned the database page to make information easier to read and access.
Added a footer to the user interface that provides important links and contact information.
The database cluster ID is now included in the Cluster Details on the Database Details page.

12 May 2020 (GA)

The Generally Available (GA) release of Astra DB includes these enhancements:

Enabled billing for C10 tier.
Reduced how long it takes to provision a cluster.
When an organization is created, roles can now be assigned for administrator, read/write, read, and service account. Groups can now be created with the associated role, except for the service account.
Added REST API to connect to database.
Users can now use their Google or GitHub logins to access the Astra DB database.
Added GraphQL to simplify queries without Cassandra Query Language (CQL).
Meets SOC2 Type I security audit compliance.

27 February 2020 (Beta)

Astra DB brought the Cassandra Query Language SHell (CQLSH) even closer to you by integrating it directly in the console. Navigate to your database, select the CQL Console tab, and issue CQL commands to interact with your database.

24 January 2020 (Beta)

The standalone version of CQLSH was released for connecting to Astra DB databases. What does that mean for you? It means connecting to an Astra DB database from your laptop without requiring DataStax Enterprise (DSE). Previously, you used native CQLSH included in DSE. Now, you can download CQLSH, download the secure connect bundle for your Astra DB database, and connect with a single command.

07 January 2020 (Beta)

The Free tier was released for Astra DB, allowing you to create an Astra DB database with 10 GB for free. Create a database with just a few clicks and start developing within minutes, no credit card required.

You can have only one active database on the Free tier.

The open Beta release of Astra DB brings the ability to develop and deploy data-driven applications with a cloud-native service, built on the best distribution of Apache Cassandra™, without the hassles of database and infrastructure administration.

Instead of listing the features included in this release, learn about what Astra DB is, and then get started with creating your own database. If you have questions, review the FAQ for answers.