We already used some NoSQL databases and of course Apache Cassandra itself. We
wanted cloud based and globally distributed Apache Cassandra as DBaaS service. Managing IaaS for this role is expensive and cumbersome in terms of managing yourself.
Free tier and pricing model of …
We chose Astra as our primary database for time series data was already on Apache Cassandra. We also utilize a small postgres database for relational data within the application, but it made sense to migrate the data to Astra from Apache Cassandra.
Astra in the general case ends up coming in cheaper than it costs to run your own VMs on a VPS to self-host either Cassandra or Scylla. How they do that, I don't know, but I'm glad they do!
For the workloads we use Astra DB for it was a better choice than the other databases. It worked out to be more scalable and cost affective than the traditional relational databases. Also performant and without the downsides of size limits compared to other services.
Apache Cassandra is a NoSQL database and well suited where you need highly available, linearly scalable, tunable consistency and high performance across varying workloads. It has worked well for our use cases, and I shared my experiences to use it effectively at the last Cassandra summit! http://bit.ly/1Ok56TK It is a NoSQL database, finally you can tune it to be strongly consistent and successfully use it as such. However those are not usual patterns, as you negotiate on latency. It works well if you require that. If your use case needs strongly consistent environments with semantics of a relational database or if the use case needs a data warehouse, or if you need NoSQL with ACID transactions, Apache Cassandra may not be the optimum choice.
We use Astra DB to improve our management systems. Storing data has become hassle-free and quite simple. When launching a Cassandra-based cloud application, Astra DB is exactly what you need. In addition to the standard training programs and videos, the extended support and training require significant additional effort to activate and cover which I feel is a bit more tedious task.
Continuous availability: as a fully distributed database (no master nodes), we can update nodes with rolling restarts and accommodate minor outages without impacting our customer services.
Linear scalability: for every unit of compute that you add, you get an equivalent unit of capacity. The same application can scale from a single developer's laptop to a web-scale service with billions of rows in a table.
Amazing performance: if you design your data model correctly, bearing in mind the queries you need to answer, you can get answers in milliseconds.
Time-series data: Cassandra excels at recording, processing, and retrieving time-series data. It's a simple matter to version everything and simply record what happens, rather than going back and editing things. Then, you can compute things from the recorded history.
Cassandra runs on the JVM and therefor may require a lot of GC tuning for read/write intensive applications.
Requires manual periodic maintenance - for example it is recommended to run a cleanup on a regular basis.
There are a lot of knobs and buttons to configure the system. For many cases the default configuration will be sufficient, but if its not - you will need significant ramp up on the inner workings of Cassandra in order to effectively tune it.
The support team sometimes requires the escalate button pressed on tickets, to get timely responses. I will say, once the ticket is escalated, action is taken.
They require better documentation on the migration of data. The three primary methods for migrating large data volumes are bulk, Cassandra Data Migrator, and ZDM (Zero Downtime Migration Utility). Over time I have become very familiar will all three of these methods; however, through working with the Services team and the support team, it seemed like we were breaking new ground. I feel if the utilities were better documented and included some examples and/or use cases from large data migrations; this process would have been easier. One lesson learned is you likely need to migrate your application servers to the same cloud provider you host Astra on; otherwise, the latency is too large for latency-sensitive applications.
I would recommend Cassandra DB to those who know their use case very well, as well as know how they are going to store and retrieve data. If you need a guarantee in data storage and retrieval, and a DB that can be linearly grown by adding nodes across availability zones and regions, then this is the database you should choose.
Their response time is fast, in case you do not contact them during business hours, they give a very good follow-up to your case. They also facilitate video calls if necessary for debugging.
We evaluated MongoDB also, but don't like the single point failure possibility. The HBase coupled us too tightly to the Hadoop world while we prefer more technical flexibility. Also HBase is designed for "cold"/old historical data lake use cases and is not typically used for web and mobile applications due to its performance concern. Cassandra, by contrast, offers the availability and performance necessary for developing highly available applications. Furthermore, the Hadoop technology stack is typically deployed in a single location, while in the big international enterprise context, we demand the feasibility for deployment across countries and continents, hence finally we are favor of Cassandra
We know Astra is built on Cassandra / Kubernetes / Stargate and can work on any cloud. The competitors we reviewed are cloud specific and create a lock in. We also have the option to run Cassandra / Stargate ourselves if we wanted to. The competitors don’t give that option
As per my experience, I never faced issues of scalability with Astra DB. We don't have at the moment a use case with millions of requests or users, so I can't give full score because of my limited use case.
I have no experience with this but from the blogs and news what I believe is that in businesses where there is high demand for scalability, Cassandra is a good choice to go for.
Since it works on CQL, it is quite familiar with SQL in understanding therefore it does not prevent a new employee to start in learning and having the Cassandra experience at an industrial level.
The high availability capabilities of Astra DB can assist in reducing downtime, which is crucial for revenue-generating applications.
The developer-friendly features of Astra DB, as well as support for known query languages, can help expedite development, save development time, and minimize labor costs. This can result in a shorter time to market and a higher ROI.
