Instaclustr makes it easy to run a production Cassandra cluster to support the Kong API management framework.

What is Kong?

Instaclustr has recently announced a partnership with Mashape to support users of their Kong open source API gateway. Kong is API middleware that provides standard functionality such as authentication, rate limiting and logging for API developers. Kong uses Cassandra as it’s data store technology to provide scalability, reliability and performance.

Benefits of using Instaclustr for managing Cassandra

The Kong install packages all provide fairly simple, step by step instructions to install your own Cassandra instance to use with Kong so you might wonder why you would want to use Instaclustr as a managed service to provide Cassandra for your Kong installation. Well, I’m glad you asked – here are some of the key things that we take care of when providing Cassandra as a managed service that you would have to worry about after the initial setup with do-it-yourself Cassandra options:

• Securing Cassandra with configuration of password authentication and client to server encryption: standard Cassandra installs come without password authentication or client to server encryption enabled. While this may be suitable for some environment it still represents a looser security environment than most people prefer. Enabling password auth is a pretty simple change but encryption can be quite a bit more involved – with Instaclustr it’s a matter of checking a single box (and we also automatically enable node-to-node encryption on all servers behind the scenes).
• Managing day to day Cassandra operations: Cassandra requires regular operational activities, including backups and repairs which have to be implemented correctly to be effective. Instaclustr’s systems automatically carry out these operations for clusters under our management and have been tested and proven over many thousands of node-hours of operations. Instaclustr’s monitoring systems are developed and tuned to detect key warning sign of potential issues before they occur.
• Troubleshooting: The vast majority of Kong installs will be very low-volume uses of Cassandra, if properly maintained and operated, encountering issues can be expected to be pretty rare. The problem with that is that, if you do encounter issues, you’ll have limited Cassandra troubleshooting experience to draw on to resolve them. Instaclustr’s team of admins spend all day every day dealing with Cassandra and is ready 24×7 to resolve any issues that arise.
• Expert Advice: Should you decide to expand your use of Cassandra beyond Kong or reach a scale were additional tuning or other advice is required, Instaclustr will be available to provide access to deep Cassandra expertise to help make the most of Cassandra.

Configuring Kong with Instaclustr

Setting up Kong to work with Instaclustr is easy:

1. Provision a new AWS or Azure server and install Kong.
2. Log in to the Instaclustr console, fill in one form and hit go to provision a new Instaclustr Cassandra cluster in the same region as your Kong server, add the IP of your Kong server to the allowed connection sources.
3. Enter the IPs of the newly provisioned Cassandra servers in your kong.yml configuration fiule. If you’ve chosen to use password authentication, enter the user name and password in kong.yml. If you’re using client to server encryption, download the certificate file from the Instaclustr console and enter the path to the file in kong.yml.
4. Start Kong and build some APIs.

We’ve provided detailed, step-by-step instructions for these in our support portal: https://support.instaclustr.com/hc/en-us/articles/204986160 and should you run into any problems connecting to Cassandra then our support team is available 24 x 7 to help.