DataStax Pushes The Cloud Database Performance Boundary With New Release

DataStax has debuted a new edition of its DataStax Enterprise distributed cloud database software that doubles the software's read and write performance and supports twice the throughput and number of users.

The release of DataStax Enterprise 6 comes as more businesses are adopting a hybrid cloud/on-premises computing model and shift more workloads to public and private cloud systems.

"These are more revolutionary changes than evolutionary changes," said Martin Van Ryswyk, executive vice president of product management and engineering at DataStax, describing the improvements in DSE 6 in an interview with CRN.

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DSE is based on the open-source Apache Cassandra database and in the past has competed with the plethora of next-generation NoSQL databases on the market.

But Van Ryswyk said DataStax has positioned itself as a distributed cloud database for hybrid cloud computing – about half of its customers are running the company's software in a public cloud environment – and sees cloud databases like Amazon Web Services' DynamoDB, Microsoft's Azure Cosmos DB and Google Cloud Spanner as its competition.

DSE 6 achieves half the latency for application response and twice the throughput and user capacity through a new thread-per-core architecture design that results in more evenly distributed data in the cluster and more evenly distributed CPU utilization. The database also now handles reads, writes and other tasks as asynchronous operations, eliminating processing thread contention.

The new release also includes improvements to the storage engine that improve latency and optimizes data compaction, often a bottleneck for write-heavy workloads, according to DataStax.

In a move to improve system management and maintenance simplicity, DSE 6 introduces DSE NodeSync, new technology that automates many manual database repair and maintenance processes. The new DSE Upgrade Service automates the download and deployment of software patch upgrades. And the new DSE TrafficControl capability ensures that DSE nodes stay online under heavy workloads.

DSE 6 has a new advanced Apache Spark communication layer that integrates DataStax with the Spark engine, making it possible to run analytical queries on DataStax data at three times the performance in earlier editions.

New security capabilities, enhancements to the database's graph functionality and an improved DataStax Bulk Loader round out the new release.

DataStax has traditionally focused on direct sales, although Van Ryswyk said that sales involving partners are growing. The vendor's partner roster includes systems integrators such as Deloitte and Accenture, solutions providers like Perficient and consultants such as West Monroe Partners.