Astra Streaming enrollment FAQ
When considering Astra Streaming for your production workloads, you might have questions about what options are available for connecting and consuming your serverless clusters. This page answers some common questions about getting started with Astra Streaming.
Why does DataStax call Astra Streaming "serverless"?
Running a - Pulsar cluster that can handle at-scale workloads is not a trivial task. It requires many (virtual) machines to be configured in a very particular way.
In traditional cloud environments, you would pay hourly for every machine whether they are being used for workloads or not, and you would carry the burden of maintaining the server infrastructure.
Serverless removes those operational burdens, and you pay only for the resources you actually use.
Are connections to shared clusters less secure than dedicated clusters?
Connections to both cluster types are secure. However, dedicated clusters offer the option for private connectivity.
For dedicated Pulsar clusters, all connections in Astra Streaming are guarded by authentication, authorization, and secure (TLS) communications. You can connect over the public internet or establish a private connection.
Shared Pulsar clusters also use a secure connection over the public internet. However, shared clusters don’t support private links.
For more information, see Astra Streaming pricing.
Does Astra Streaming support single-sign on?
If your Astra DB organization is on the Pay As You Go or Enterprise Astra DB subscription plan, your users can use SSO to sign in to the Astra Portal. For more information, see Configure single sign-on.
What is the difference between Astra DB application tokens and the Pulsar tokens?
See Manage tokens.
What are the differences in geo-replication for shared and dedicated clusters?
Geo-replication is available for both shared and dedicated clusters. Both cluster types can replicate to other clusters, but there are some differences:
- Connections
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For shared clusters, traffic between clusters is secured over the public internet.
Dedicated clusters can use either the default secure public internet connection or enable private links.
- Regions
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Shared clusters can replicate between any supported region of the same cloud provider.
Dedicated clusters can use almost any region supported by your cloud provider, as well as across cloud providers.
For more on geo-replication, see Geo-replication.
Application development
Can I migrate data from my existing Pulsar cluster to Astra Streaming?
Unless you are starting a project from scratch, you likely have message data that needs to be brought over to your Astra Streaming tenants. For migration assistance, contact DataStax Support.
Every tenant in Astra Streaming comes with custom ports for Kafka and RabbitMQ workloads. DataStax also offers a fully-compatible JMS implementation for your Java workloads. For more information, see DataStax Starlight Suite of Pulsar Extensions.
How do I separate messaging traffic?
It is common to have a hierarchy of development environments through which you promote app changes before they reach production. The configurations of middleware and platforms supporting the app should be kept in parity to promote stability and fast iterations with low volatility.
- By Tenant
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To support the hierarchy of development environments, DataStax recommends creating separate tenants for each development environment. This gives you the greatest flexibility to balance the separation of roles with consistent service configuration.
All tokens created within a tenant are limited to that tenant.
For example, start with a tenant named
Devthat your development teams can access and create tokens for, and then create other tenants namedStagingandProduction. At each level of the hierarchy, there are fewer users with access to the environment’s tenant, which means fewer opportunities to create tokens that can programmatically access that tenant. Yet, you still maintain parity across the three environments. - By Namespace
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Alternatively, you might choose to separate development environments by namespace within your Astra Streaming tenant. While this doesn’t offer as much flexibility as separation by tenant, it does offer a much simpler model to manage. Also, note that in this scheme you cannot limit access by namespace. All tokens would have access to all namespaces.
Can I develop applications on open source Pulsar and then move to Astra Streaming?
Astra Streaming is actively maintained to keep parity with the official Apache Pulsar project. The notable differences arise from accessibility and security. Naturally, you have less control in a managed, serverless cluster than you do in a cluster running in your own environment. Beyond those differences, the effort to develop locally and then move to Astra Streaming should not be significant, but DataStax recommends that you develop directly in Astra Streaming. If you are trying to reduce costs, use the free tier of Astra Streaming and then switch when you are ready to stage your production services.
Can I use Astra Streaming with my existing Kafka or RabbitMQ applications?
Yes, Astra Streaming offers a fully compatible Kafka and RabbitMQ implementation. This means you can use your existing Kafka or RabbitMQ applications with Astra Streaming. You can also use the Astra Streaming Kafka or RabbitMQ implementation with your existing Pulsar applications. Astra Streaming comes with custom ports for Kafka and RabbitMQ workloads. Learn more about the Starlight suite of APIs.
Can I use Astra Streaming with my existing Java applications?
Yes, Astra Streaming offers a fully compatible JMS implementation. This means you can use your existing JMS applications with Astra Streaming. You can also use the Astra Streaming JMS implementation with your existing Pulsar applications. Learn more about the Starlight suite of APIs.
