K8ssandra 1.0 Stable Release and What's Next

Welcome and Announcements
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Originally published at: K8ssandra 1.0 Stable Release and What's Next | K8ssandra, Apache Cassandra® on Kubernetes

A project’s 1.0 release is a significant milestone. In some cases it is the solidification of an API. In others, it’s a reflection of its suitability for production workloads, and sometimes it’s just because the developers like round numbers. For K8ssandra, the 1.0 release represents a version that is ready for widespread adoption. This means our 1.0 release provides configuration interfaces with smart, well-tested defaults. It also means shipping thoughtful documentation to guide you through deployment and operation. Beyond the code bits and Helm charts, the project has grown significantly. We’ve seen an evolution of how features are developed, validated, and deployed. We’ve also automated processes to ease the development workflow.

The K8ssandra team has shipped regular updates to the Helm repository, each one reflecting new functionality, bug fixes, and enhancements. Part of a 1.0 release is a confidence in stability and measured release of major, minor, and patch level changes. K8ssandra 1.0 also brings online a pair of release streams: Stable and Next. The Stable stream contains releases that have undergone additional testing and validation prior to being published. Alternatively, users looking for the latest in-flight functionality may leverage the Next stream. This new stream exposes chart updates as they are merged into the main branch. Whether you are looking to take the latest feature for a spin, or validate a bugfix before a wider release, you can do so without having to clone the repo and build from source.

Update 5/4/2021: The Next stream was deprecated in PR #696. To get the latest development release, use the --devel flag on the helm install command in the Stable stream.

Since the initial release of K8ssandra at Kubecon NA 2020, there have been 59 incremental version updates. Let’s take a look at how much ground has been covered over that time.

Stats

Commits Opened Issues Closed Issues Files Changed Contributors
259 380 267 308 27

Features

  • Installation with a single chart
  • Dedicated charts for sub-projects
  • Stargate integration
  • Authentication enabled by default
  • Non-root containers
  • Migration to kube-prometheus-stack
  • Comprehensive Getting Started and Tasks documentation
  • Integration with native K8s Ingress resources for HTTP workloads
  • Additional C* configuration points (topology, heap, storage class)
  • Namespace-scoped resources

Components

  • K8ssandra – v1.0.0
  • Apache Cassandra® – 3.11.6, 3.11.7, 3.11.8, 3.11.9, 3.11.10, 4.0-beta4
  • Stargate – v1.0.9
  • Medusa for Apache Cassandra® – v0.9.0
  • Reaper for Apache Cassandra® – v2.2.1
  • Metrics Collector for Apache Cassandra – v0.2.0
  • Management API for Apache Cassandra – v0.1.22
  • Cass Operator – v1.6.0
  • Medusa Operator – v0.1.0
  • Reaper Operator – v0.1.1
  • kube-prometheus-stack chart – v12.11.3
    • Prometheus – v0.44.0
    • Grafana – v6.1

Events

Event Video Resources
KubeCon NA 2020 Workshop: Putting Apache Cassandra™ on Automatic with Kubernetes YouTube Recording GitHub Repo
Developer Week 2021 Talk: Building a Data Plane with K8ssandra, Apache Cassandra® on Kubernetes Coming Soon Slides
DataStax Devs Workshop Series: Kubernetes and Docker YouTube Playlist GitHub Repo

Contributors

THANK YOU to everyone who contributed to the project and made 1.0 happen. Whether it’s a typo correction, YAML indentation tweak, or operator go code, every bit shared makes this project better. A huge thank you to the core team:

And new contributors:

Looking for a guided experience with K8ssandra? Join us at the workshop next week as we walk through installation and exploration of this cloud-native data platform. Explore the updated Getting Started guide and join the community as we move forward towards the next release.