12.12.18
Instaclustr, the leading provider of completely managed solutions for scalable open source technologies, today announced the availability of three open source projects purpose-built to expand developers’ capabilities using Apache Cassandra and address pain points. These projects include an open source Cassandra operator for more seamlessly running and operating Cassandra within Kubernetes, and open source LDAP and Kerberos authenticator plug-ins for Cassandra.
With Kubernetes emerging as the dominant container orchestration solution – and with Cassandra recognized for providing scalable applications with highly reliable data storage – more and more developers are seeking to use these powerful solutions in tandem. While running Cassandra on Kubernetes can be relatively simple to begin with, Kubernetes provides only a limited understanding of database functionality: it’s blind to key details of the database being written to, and has incomplete capabilities for storing data in-state.
With the open source Cassandra operator, Instaclustr and partner contributors have now introduced a solution that functions as a Cassandra-as-a-Service on Kubernetes, specifically designed to alleviate persistent challenges developers face when combining these technologies. The Cassandra operator takes deployment and operations duties completely off of developers’ plates. It provides a consistent environment and set of operations founded in best practices, and is reproducible across production clusters and development, staging, and QA environments. These advantages allow developers to focus their attention on product development – with the full strengths of Kubernetes and Cassandra at their disposal. The Cassandra operator is now ready to use in development environments through GitHub. The project continues to undergo improvements, with plans to add components and capabilities that will expand the operator’s value for developers.
To meet developers’ increasing demand for LDAP integration into Cassandra, Instaclustr has also created and released an open source LDAP authenticator plug-in that works closely with the existing CassandraAuthorizer implementation. This plug-in enables developers to much more quickly reap the benefits of secure LDAP authentication without any need to write their own solutions, and to transition to using the authenticator with zero downtime. The LDAP authenticator is freely available on GitHub, along with setup and usage instructions.
Additionally, Instaclustr has released an open source Kerberos authenticator that makes Kerberos’ industry-leading secure authentication and true single sign-on capabilities available to developers using Apache Cassandra. This project also includes a Kerberos authenticator plugin for the Cassandra Java driver.
Instaclustr customers with Apache Cassandra Enterprise Support can receive assistance implementing and running the LDAP and Kerberos authenticators. Enterprise support for the Cassandra operator will start next year.
“Our commitment to delivering 100% open source data-layer solutions for our managed platform extends to the development of new open source tools – especially when we recognize specific needs felt by our customers,” said Ben Bromhead, CTO, Instaclustr. “With these open source projects, we’ve set out to empower any developer who wishes to pair Cassandra with Kubernetes, or take advantage of LDAP or Kerberos authentication within their Cassandra deployments. We invite anyone interested to join our community of contributors, and suggest or offer improvements to these open source projects.”
