What is Cass Operator?

Cass Operator automates deploying and managing Cassandra or DSE in Kubernetes.

DataStax Kubernetes Operator for Apache Cassandra® (Cass Operator) automates the process of deploying and managing open-source Apache Cassandra® or DataStax Enterprise (DSE) in a Kubernetes cluster.

Cass Operator distills the user-supplied information down to the number of nodes and cluster name to manage the lifecycle of individual Kubernetes resources. Additional options are available, but for starters, that's essentially all you'll need to specify. Now the process of managing the distributed Cassandra or DSE data platform is turnkey and much easier, which means your team is free to focus on the application layer and its functionality.

Cass Operator can use any of the following certified Kubernetes platforms:
  • Open-source Kubernetes
  • Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)
  • DigitalOcean Kubernetes (DOKS)
  • Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)
  • Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
  • Pivotal Container Service (PKS)
Tip: To deploy and manage Cassandra 3.11.7 to 4.0.0 Beta databases, you can also use the open-source K8ssandra project. The cass-operator is included with K8ssanda (pronounced "Kate" + "Sandra"). For details, see the K8ssandra documentation.

Let's start with cass-operator by looking at containers and the emergence of Kubernetes as the premier platform for application orchestration.

Optimizing data management in containers with Kubernetes

Containers are a popular technology used to accelerate today's application development. Thanks to prevalent container platforms like Docker, you can package applications efficiently compared with virtual machines. With containers, apps and all of their dependencies are packaged together into a minimal deployable image. As a developer, you can use containers to move applications between environments and guarantee that your apps behave as expected. These goals led to the creation of container orchestration platforms. The leader in this space is Kubernetes.

Highlighting just a few of the advantages:
  • Kubernetes accepts definitions for services and handles the assignment of containers to servers and connecting them together.
  • Kubernetes dynamically tracks the health of the running containers. If a container goes down, Kubernetes handles restarting it, and can schedule its container replacement on other hardware.
  • By using Kubernetes to orchestrate containers, you can rapidly build microservice-powered applications and ensure they run as designed across any Kubernetes platform.

Cassandra and DSE in Kubernetes clusters

Cassandra and DSE substantially simplify development. All nodes are equal, and each node is capable of handling read and write requests with no single point of failure. Data is automatically replicated between failure zones to prevent the loss of a single container taking down your application. With simple configuration options in Cass Operator, Cassandra and DSE databases can rapidly take advantage of Kubernetes orchestration and are well suited for the container-first approach in your enterprise.

Ready to get started?

Read the release notes.

If you have questions, refer to the FAQs.

If you're new to Kubernetes, go through the steps to Create a Kubernetes cluster.

Then follow the steps to get started with Cass Operator in a Kubernetes cluster.