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K8ssandra - Helm Chart for Cassandra & Other Tools

What is K8ssandra?

K8ssandra is a helm chart that allows Apache Cassandra DBAs to easily bring up and manage a Cassandra cluster on any distribution of Kubernetes using a few simple commands. So what makes K8ssandra different from an operator such as Cass-Operator, CassKop?

  • It uses the Cass-Operator to bring up and manage Cassandra clusters in Kubernetes.
  • It also manages other tools (Reaper, Medusa, Prometheus) that make managing Cassandra easier in general.
  • It’s a helm chart so you can get started with Cassandra on Kubernetes a few simple commands.
helm repo add k8ssandra https://helm.k8ssandra.io/
helm repo add traefik https://helm.traefik.io/traefik
helm repo update
helm install k8ssandra k8ssandra/k8ssandra

As the contributors to the Cass-Operator project continue working on merging features from other operators into one, K8ssandra promises a set of helm charts that allow users to quickly use the operator in conjunction with other tools in a reference architecture on Kubernetes without reinventing the wheel.

K8ssandra.io
(Credit: Jeff Carpenter @ Datastax Developer Blog)

K8ssandra ships with the following major components that most new users of Cassandra on Kubernetes will need to professional operate a cluster :

  • Cass-Operator – The Kubernetes Operator for Apache Cassandra itself. It’s at the heart of K8ssandra.
  • Cassandra Reaper – Automatic Cassandra repair management with a UI built at Spotify, maintained by TLP.  
  • Cassandra Medusa – Backup and restore tool that works with different storage options, built at Spotify, maintained by TLP.  
  • Prometheus – Basically the defacto protocol for collecting and visualizing metrics in the cloud-native container world. 
  • Grafana – Grafana is the defacto method for making dashboards on top of Prometheus & Graphite. 
  • Metric Collector for Apache Cassandra – Built on collectd, it can work with Prometheus and Grafana or other systems. 
  • Traefik – Popular Ingress management / Proxy for containers and Kubernetes.