Here is a roundup of the latest features and updates to the Instaclustr Managed Platform over the last few months! Our team has been hard at work listening to your feedback and making continuous improvements.
If you have specific feature requests or improvement ideas you’d love to see, please get in touch with us.
Major Announcements:
Apache Cassandra®
The Public Preview Release of Apache Cassandra 5.0 Beta on Instaclustr Managed Platform
Apache Cassandra 5.0 Beta version is now available for public preview on the Instaclustr Managed Platform. This release is designed to allow anyone to easily undertake any application-specific testing of Cassandra 5.0 (Beta 1.0) in preparation for the forthcoming GA release of Apache Cassandra 5.0. We are proud to be the first managed service platform to release this version for deployment on all major cloud providers or on-premises.
Apache Spark™
Support Offering for Apache Spark™
Instaclustr has added a support offering for Apache Spark™. Customers can draw on NetApp’s technical expertise for best practice advice about Apache Spark configuration and application scaling. Customers will receive 24 x7 assistance troubleshooting performance, stability, and functionality issues.
Cadence®
New Instaclustr Offering for Cadence® Light Production Workloads
Instaclustr’s Production Shared Infrastructure offering for Cadence dramatically reduces the entry price point for light production workloads. The offering drops our starting point for production Cadence from around $5,000 per month to $790, while maintaining high-performance standards and all standard Cadence features. It is now supported for development and production usage and is fully SOC 2 compliant.
Try provisioning a Candence cluster with Shared Infrastructure from our console.
PostgreSQL®
PostgreSQL Azure Netapp Files Fast Forking
Fast Forking for PostgreSQL on Azure NetApp File (ANF) is now GA on the Instaclustr Managed Platform, allowing customers to create an exact copy of their data and attach it to a new PostgreSQL instance in minutes rather than hours.
With Fast Forking for PostgreSQL, customers can achieve dramatically more efficient database cloning for testing, blue/green deployments, or analytics use cases. Try ANF Fast forking for PostgreSQL on our console.
Valkey
Instaclustr’s Transition from Redis to ValKey
NetApp announces our plan to support the Valkey project, a truly open source fork of Redis, in response to the Redis license change. The Instaclustr Managed Platform enables organizations using Redis to migrate to Valkey, avoiding the risk of future license changes. Watch Instaclustr blog for our next announcement.
Instaclustr Managed Platform
Instaclustr Is Now Available on Azure Marketplace:
Instaclustr Platform subscriptions are now available through Azure Marketplace, allowing customers to draw down on Azure commitments, and simplifying procurement. The initial launch supports our “Run In Instaclustr Account” (RIIA) model, and customers can self-service provision and manage all existing Instaclustr offerings. Private offers are also available. Stay tuned for the next launch, supporting our “Run in Your Own Account” (RIYOA) model on Azure Marketplace.
Other Significant Changes:
Apache Cassandra®
Instaclustr for Apache Cassandra 3.11.17, 4.0.12, and 4.1.4 have been released as GA on the Instaclustr Managed Platform. These versions include a series of important fixes and improvements that enhance the stability, performance, and security of Cassandra deployments.
Apache Kafka®
- The Subject Alternative Names feature enabling the addition of custom values is now supported with Instaclustr for Apache Kafka, allowing the use of internal DNS for securely connecting clients with the Kafka cluster
- Instaclustr for Apache ZooKeeper™ 3.7.2 and 3.8.4 are both available in GA
- Instaclustr for Apache Kafka 3.6.2 is now GA on our Managed Platform.
Cadence®
Cadence 1.2.2 is GA. Cadence 0.22.4 is now Legacy Support, and Cadence 1.0.0 is retired
Ocean for Apache Spark™
- Application Configuration Templates have been enhanced with finer-grained permissions allowing customers to:
- Allocate resources among teams
- Enforce team specific standards for running applications
- Protect security configurations
Support Offering for Apache Spark™
Instaclustr and Red Hat partnered to jointly certify a Spark operator for the OpenShift container platform. This certification helps legacy on-premises Big Data applications to modernize by delivering elastic-scaling and multi-tenancy capabilities. This capability is available for cloud-based customers as well.
OpenSearch®
- NetApp® StorageGRID is now available for OpenSearch for backups, enabling on-premises deployments and advanced features such as Searchable Snapshots.
- Support for Azure Managed Identities and Google Application Default Credentials are available and have been contributed back to the OpenSearch community.
- OpenSearch® versions 2.12.0 and 1.3.15 are now in GA on the Instaclustr Managed Platform. OpenSearch® 1.3.14 is deprecated, and OpenSearch® 1.3.9 is Legacy Support.
- New node sizes r6g.medium have been added to OpenSearch on AWS deployments.
PostgreSQL®
- Multi-region replication for Instaclustr for PostgreSQL® is now supported in Azure.
- PostgreSQL versions 16.2, 15.6, 14.11, and 13.14 are GA.
- PgBouncer version 1.22.0 is released as GA. PgBouncer is a program sitting in front of PostgreSQL to enable connection pooling, allowing the cluster to serve more clients simultaneously and offers improved performance on certain workloads. Get started with PgBouncer on the Instaclustr Managed Platform.
- Support provisioning multiple PostgreSQL ANF clusters within the same custom virtual network. Customers can benefit from high-performance ANF storage while achieving network isolation and compliance requirements within their VNet.
Redis™
Redis version 7.2.4 was released on Instaclustr Managed Platform.
Instaclustr Managed Platform
- New User Actions Feature has been released on the Instaclustr Console. This feature streamlines the audit process by providing a comprehensive view of all platform user actions. This feature assists with the organization’s data security and regulatory compliance requirements.
- Added support for the eu-south-2 AWS region.
Upcoming Releases:
Apache Cassandra®
After the public review release of Cassandra 5.0 on the Instaclustr Managed Platform, we are gearing up for the General Availability release. Customers can take advantage of the new features of Cassandra 5.0, which are backed by industry-leading SLAs and are suitable for use in production environments. Keep an eye out for the exciting announcement of our GA release!
Apache Kafka®
Tiered storage support will be added to Kafka as a Public Review release on the Instaclustr Managed Platform. The new feature allows customers to achieve cost-efficiency by separating the storage of their Kafka topics into different tiers based on their access patterns and retention requirements while still being able to scale storage capacity seamlessly and indefinitely.
Cadence®
Following the release of Production Shared Infrastructure, the next incoming feature, Resize Shared Infrastructure, gives customers more flexibility to change between plans of the Cadence Shared Infrastructure for Production and Development usage on the Instaclustr Managed Platform.
PostgreSQL®
Azure Private Link will allow one-way endpoints for customers to connect to their PostgreSQL clusters for the highest level of security.
Instaclustr Managed Platform
- Following the successful release of supporting our offerings Run In Instaclustr Account (RIIA) Model in Azure Marketplace, we continue to extend support for Run In Your Own Account (RIYOA) model. This enables customers to deploy and manage Instaclustr‘s offerings within their own Azure subscription while retaining complete control and ownership over their Azure account and resources.
- API support will be added for the User Actions feature.
Did You Know?
- How to visualize and monitor data within your Instaclustr for Apache Kafka® cluster
- If you’ve been using Instaclustr for Apache Kafka® and want to know how you can get the most out of it in a more user-friendly way read our blog series part 1, part 2, and part 3, where we cover Kafka UIs called AKHQ, UI for Kafka, and Kafdrop respectively) These blogs will help you understand how to visualize and monitor data with your Instaclustr for Apache Kafka® deployment.
- Node throughput Benchmarking for Apache Cassandra® on AWS, Azure, and GCP
- Have you been wondering about the comparative benchmarking of our Instaclustr Managed Platform across various cloud providers and the different node sizes we offer? In that case, we have recently completed an extensive benchmarking exercise, the results of which will assist our customers in evaluating and selecting the best node sizes that provide optimal performance at the lowest cost.
- Top 5 Questions We’re Asked About Apache Cassandra® 5.0 for Apache Cassandra® on AWS, Azure, and GCP
- Following our latest Public Review release of Cassandra 5.0, there have been many questions from our customers regarding the features, use cases, and benefits of opting for Cassandra 5.0 and how it can help support their growing needs for scalability, performance, and advanced data analysis. Dive into the details of some of the frequently asked questions in this article.