Intro to Hyper-Converged Database (HCD)
DataStax Hyper-Converged Database (HCD) is a self-managed database built on Apache Cassandra®, an open-source NoSQL distributed database. HCD allows you to manage your hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) in a unified platform for data, AI, and analytics workloads.
HCD provides developers with essential tools to create robust AI applications, including APIs, real-time data processing, and integrations. With HCD, you can integrate generative AI and vector search capabilities to enhance your enterprise data workloads.
HCD for HCI
HCD is ideal for enterprise operators and architects who want to take advantage of data center modernization investments to reduce operating costs and operational overhead. HCD supports modern data centers and HCI for data workloads and AI systems at scale.
Mission Control for cluster management
Mission Control is a cloud-based service that provides a unified management console for your database clusters. For production deployments, DataStax recommends that you use Mission Control to manage your clusters. For installation instructions, see Install and configure Mission Control.
Vector search applications with HCD
HCD is designed for vector search applications, such as Generative AI (GenAI), semantic search, and geospatial search, as well as traditional NoSQL applications. HCD stores vector embeddings alongside non-vector tabular data. If you build Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)-based applications, you can use HCD to store and query vector embeddings.
A few examples of RAG applications include:
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AI assistants or chatbots
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Agents
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Document questions and answers
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Sentiment analysis
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Personalization
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Image, video, or audio search
Schema-driven applications with HCD
Use HCD for schema-driven applications, such as e-commerce, financial services, and IoT. If you build applications that require a schema, you can use the Cassandra Query Language (CQL) to interact with the database. Oftentimes, applications may require both data stored in a tabular format and data stored in a schemaless format.
HCD is designed to support both types of applications.
Load data
Load your data into HCD databases through the Data API or the DataStax Bulk Loader (DSBulk).
Connect and integrate
In addition to Mission Control, you can interact with your databases through the Data API and CQL queries.
DataStax offers clients and drivers to facilitate API and CQL interactions. For more information, see Compare connection methods.
Compare HCD with other DataStax databases
While you can run DataStax Enterprise (DSE) on premises and in the cloud, HCD allows you to manage your database resources with modern architecture and a cloud-native approach and includes vector search capabilities.
Astra DB is a true database-as-a-service (DBaaS) offering that provides simplified database management with flexible pricing.
For more information, see How is HCD different from Astra DB? and How is HCD different from DSE?
Get started with HCD
Evaluate HCD with Vector free of charge for 180 days. Note that non-production issues raised with DataStax support will incur a charge. Contact us to get started.
