Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)s

DataStax Mission Control is current in Private Preview. It is subject to the beta agreement executed between you and DataStax. DataStax Mission Control 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 DataStax Mission Control will ever become generally available. DataStax Mission Control is provided on an “AS IS” basis, without warranty or indemnity of any kind.

If you are interested in trying out DataStax Mission Control please contact your DataStax account team.

What is DataStax Mission Control?

DataStax Mission Control provides everything needed to run DSE clusters of any scale with reduced complexity and integrations with centralized services within the enterprise.

DataStax Mission Control manages the entire operational surface of DataStax Enterprise, DSE, across a diverse array of hosting options, from self-managed bare-metal to cloud-provided virtual machines. DataStax Mission Control provides always-on, automated operations of DSE clusters based on expertise running DataStax Astra. It assists DataStax customers with their own on-premises deployments. It vastly simplifies lifecycle management, observability, best practice configuration, and advanced operations.

What are the main components of DataStax Mission Control?

Lifecycle Management: Simplify deploying and configuring DataStax Enterprise (DSE) clusters in Kubernetes.
Observability: Follow logs and metrics and use monitoring tools to track the operations of your DSE system.
Health & Best Practices: Kubernetes uses kubelet to probe the need to restart a container, while deployments use readiness probes to check a pod’s ability to receive traffic.
Security: Secure the build and restore processes from nodes to datacenters from the cloud.
Advanced Operations: Perform node repairs, compaction, streaming, and backup & restore.

Who is the target audience?

Existing and new DataStax Enterprise (DSE) users.

Browser-Based User Interface: Users connect to a web service running within the DataStax Mission Control environment. From here they are presented with an Astra-like experience for deploying and managing services running within their infrastructure. Based on user permissions multiple views are available for various parts of the system including connection and health information for developers, advanced observability and operations controls for database administrators, and hardware capacity and usage for infrastructure engineers.
Kubernetes API Endpoints: Any task that can be run within the DataStax Mission Control user interface is also available via Kubernetes APIs and Custom Resource Definitions (CRD). This allows any Kubernetes client or enabled project to automate and interface with DataStax Mission Control. From GitOps workflows with Flux and Argo to template-based Helm charts, DataStax Mission Control provides extreme flexibility for integration with existing systems.

What is the pricing model?

Pricing for DataStax Mission Control is included in the DSE license and all existing DSE customers will get a free download to replace OpsCenter.

Is there support available?

Yes. Contact your account team for a license file and download links if the welcome email is inaccessible. The links include a method to provide feedback to DataStax and ask questions.

What is a `Control Plane` Cluster?

A Control Plane is the management layer that establishes and controls all key operations related to management of database components, provides access to its functions via APIs, and handles the ongoing lifecycle of and health of the whole system.

mc high level architecture

What is a `Data Plane` Cluster?

While the Control Plane establishes policies for all key operations, the Data Plane is the remaining infrastructure architecture that carries out the operational policies. In Kubernetes, worker nodes, along with their pods and containers, comprise the Data Plane. A Kubelet is a small application that runs on each node in the cluster and executes actions.

What is a Kubernetes Cluster?

It is a set of nodes that run containerized applications. An application is packaged into a container along with its dependencies and necessary services. In Kubernetes, a pod is a wrapper around a single container, and that pod is what Kubernetes manages.

What is a DataStax Enterprise Cluster?

A cluster comprised of one or more nodes that exists as an always-on data platform for cloud applications that is powered by Apache Cassandra^TM. It uses the OpsCenter Web application to monitor and run administrative operations on the nodes. DataStax Mission Control is intended to supersede OpsCenter functionality as Kubernetes clusters move, in part or wholly, to the Cloud.

What is the mapping of Kubernetes terms to DataStax Enterprise / Apache Cassandra Terms?

Table 1. Mapping of Terms
Term	Description	Kubernetes	Apache Cassandra ^TM
Container	a way to package an application along with its libraries and its dependencies	√	√
Docker	most popular contnainer runtime software running containerization of applications	√	√
Manifest	typically either a JSON or YAML file that specifies a desired state of a Kubernetes API object such as a pod, deployment, or service.	√	√
Namespace	Equivalent with virtual cluster, providing a way to divide a physical cluster into multiple virtual clusters. It is also a way to provide organization to objects in a cluster.	√	√
Node	either physical or virtual machines in the cluster from which applications run	√ controlled by the Kubernetes `Control Plane`	√
Logging	Logs are the list of events that are recorded by a cluster or application. They help us understand how data is flowing through applications as well as spot when and where errors occur.	√ In Kubernetes your application should output logs to `stdout` and `stderr`.	√
Proxy	A server that acts as an intermediary for a remote service, taking client requests and copying client data to the server, and sending the server replies to the client.	√ kube-proxy is the network proxy that performs Kubernetes networking services in and out of the cluster	√
RBAC	Role-Based Access Control uses roles which grant the required level of access to sets of users in the cluster.	√ Managed through the Kubernetes API	√
Secret	A kuberenetes object that stores sensitive information such as passwords, API keys, and ssh keys so that pods can use that information without the data being shown. Sensitive data is exposed to containers either as a file in a volume mount or through environment variables.	√	√