DataStax, which provides an enterprise distribution of Apache Cassandra, has introduced DataStax Enterprise 4.7 (DSE 4.7), which the company says, is purpose-built for the stringent performance and availability demands of web, mobile and Internet of Things (IOT) applications. The new release includes advancements to integrated enterprise search, analytics, in-memory computing, and database management and monitoring to address the increasing shift toward mixed workload deployments.
DSE 4.7 includes a new certified version of Apache Solr and DSE’s “live indexing” capability that makes new data immediately available for search. DSE search can be configured to run across multiple data centers and cloud availability zones, which provides constant uptime for search operations and allows results to be sent back to users in the fastest possible time.
In addition, with encryption and external security software support enhancements, DSE 4.7 and OpsCenter 5.2, DataStax’s visual management and monitoring solution, offer improved data protection. DSE 4.7 delivers upgraded data at rest protection by providing an option to store encryption keys, needed to “unlock” the data for use, on servers outside the DSE cluster. In addition, OpsCenter now supports the use of LDAP and Active Directory to manage administration security, making it easy to control what administrators and operations personnel can do on database clusters.
“As the amount of data collected by enterprises continues to grow at an immense rate, it’s critical to have systems in place that are capable of providing instant insight into that data,” says Robin Schumacher, vice president of products, DataStax. “With DataStax Enterprise 4.7 and OpsCenter 5.2, users can search, analyze, secure and manage their data and ensure it’s immediately available for real-time decision making.”
Developers can utilize Apache Solr search syntax in conjunction with Apache Spark’s SparkSQL, which extends Spark’s analytic query capabilities and delivers lightning fast query response times. Further, search and analytics tasks can run simultaneously on the same machine, thus delivering the potential for lower hardware costs and improved TCO.
In addition, search query routing in DSE 4.7 is now adaptive based on health of the cluster. This analytical capability utilizes a comprehensive set of parameters to decide which machines within the cluster should serve a particular query. This feature works transparently in the background thus delivering deterministic characteristics for the entire cluster and hence optimal TCO for enterprise customers. And, with the ability to customize how a failed search query is handled, users are able to configure the system to deliver partial responses, which provide an approximation of search results, or a full retry that is performed automatically.
Upgraded analytics functionality includes a new certified version of Spark version 1.2 along with support for machine learning, JDBC, and easy performance monitoring of Spark performance in DSE’s Performance Service. DSE’s in-memory option has been improved to address up to 50x more RAM than previous versions. DataStax’s continued investment in search, in-memory and analytics, greatly simplifies the development of mixed workload applications that include transactional, analytical, search and in-memory requirements.
DataStax Enterprise 4.7, which includes a production-certified version of Cassandra 2.1, is available now and OpsCenter 5.2 will be available in late June 2015. Free versions of DataStax Enterprise are available for download here.