Getting started with DataStax Enterprise 5.1
This topic provides basic information and a roadmap to documentation for System Administrators new to DataStax Enterprise (DSE).
Learn
Before diving into administration tasks, you can save a lot of time when setting up and operating DataStax Enterprise (DSE) in a production environment by learning a few basics first:
-
Cassandra-based applications and clusters are much different than relational databases and use a data model based on the types of queries, not on modeling entities and relationships. Architecture in brief contains key concepts and terminology for understanding the database.
-
You can use DSE OpsCenter and Lifecycle Manager (LCM) for most administrative tasks.
The following are not administrator-specific but are presented to give you a fuller picture of the database:
-
Cassandra Query Language (CQL) is the query language for DSE.
-
Cassandra drivers are available in several programming languages to connect client applications to the database.
-
APIs are available for DSE OpsCenter, DseGraphFrame, Apache Cassandra Spark Connector, and the Cassandra drivers.
Install DSE
Self-managed clusters require planning to ensure that you have the appropriate hardware, software, and configurations to support your workloads. To get started planning your cluster, see Capacity planning and hardware selection for DSE deployments and Initialize a DataStax Enterprise (DSE) cluster.
After you deploy a cluster, install DSE on the nodes in the cluster. To compare installation options, see Which install method should I use?.
Secure
DSE Advanced Security provides fine-grained user and access controls to keep applications data protected and compliant with regulatory standards like PCI, SOX, HIPAA, and the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Key topics include creating role, LDAP authentication, and configuring database permissions.
|
The DSE database includes the default role cassandra with password cassandra. This is a superuser login has full access to the database. DataStax recommends only using the cassandra role once during initial authentication configuration to establish your own superuser and then disabling the cassandra role. See Creating superuser accounts. |
Tune
Important tasks for optimizing database performance include the following:
Operations
The most commonly used operations include:
Load data
These are the primary tools for moving data into and out of the database:
-
Streaming tools, such as the DataStax Apache Kafka Connector
Monitor
DataStax provides and supports several tools to monitor clusters and view metrics. For more information, see Monitor DataStax Enterprise (DSE) clusters.
