Lifecycle Manager overview

An introduction to Lifecycle Manager (LCM) for provisioning DataStax Enterprise (DSE) clusters and centrally managing configurations. Simplify deploying and configuring DataStax Enterprise clusters with Lifecycle Manager.

What is Lifecycle Manager?

Lifecycle Manager (LCM) is a powerful provisioning and configuration management system designed for ease of use with DataStax Enterprise (DSE) clusters. Graphical workflows enable efficient installation and configuration of DataStax Enterprise, empowering your organization to effectively manage DataStax Enterprise clusters without requiring extensive platform expertise.

The Lifecycle Manager cluster topology model allows completely defining the cluster configuration including datacenter and node topology. The LCM model works in conjunction with a flexible configurable profile system that integrates deeply with the full spectrum of DSE settings. The declarative model facilitates inheritance of configuration profiles and more when installing and configuring DataStax Enterprise at the cluster, datacenter, or node level:
  • Efficiently monitor and prevent configuration drift by defining configuration profiles that apply to the cluster, datacenter, or node level. Enforce uniform configurations that adhere to the desired baseline configurations for the workload of each datacenter.
  • Securely stored credentials automate access to machines and package repositories without the need to repeatedly enter credentials during installation and configuration jobs.

Monitor job status with unprecedented access and deep transparency into each recorded and timestamped step of the deploy process. Drill into job details to troubleshoot provisioning and configuring jobs from the convenience of the Jobs workspace without the immediate need to scour various logs for information.

Note: The data (cluster topology models, configuration profiles, credentials, repositories, job history, and so forth) for Lifecycle Manager is stored in the lcm.db database. Your organization is responsible for backing up the lcm.db database. You must also configure failover to mirror the lcm.db.

How many nodes can Lifecycle Manager support when creating DataStax Enterprise clusters?

Lifecycle Manager supports creating DataStax Enterprise clusters with up to 300 nodes. Larger clusters cannot be managed using the LCM web UI. The API can be used directly to attempt to manage larger clusters, provided sufficient heap memory is available.

Does OpsCenter and LCM support decommission of nodes?

OpsCenter supports decommissioning a node. LCM does not currently support node decommission.

Does OpsCenter and LCM support multi-instance nodes?

OpsCenter supports monitoring multi-instance nodes.
Note: Lifecycle Manager does not currently support managing DataStax Enterprise Multi-Instance nodes (also referred to as dense nodes).

Which snitches does LCM support?

At this time, only the GossipingPropertyFileSnitch (GPFS) is supported for managing or importing DataStax Enterprise clusters in Lifecycle Manager.

What partitioners does LCM support?

What operating systems does LCM support?

Lifecycle Manager runs on OpsCenter-supported Linux environments only.
Note: As of OpsCenter and Lifecycle Manager 6.1.3 and later, LCM automatically performs an OS supported platform check for the version of DSE being installed. For details, see Supported OS platform check for DSE installs.