Manikandan Srinivasan

<h1>Announcing OpsCenter 6.5</h1>
<p><a href="http://www.datastax.com/products/datastax-opscenter">DataStax</a> <a href="http://www.datastax.com/products/datastax-opscenter">OpsCenter</a> is an easy-to-use visual management and monitoring solution enabling administrators, architects, and developers to quickly provision, monitor, and maintain <a href="http://www.datastax.com/products/datastax-enterprise">DataStax</a> <a href="http://www.datastax.com/products/datastax-enterprise">Enterprise</a> (DSE) clusters, which are built on the best distribution of Apache Cassandra&trade;.</p>
<p>Today, I am pleased to announce the general availability of DataStax OpsCenter 6.5, fully supporting <a title="DSE 6.0" href="https://docs.datastax.com/en/dse/6.0/dse-dev/index.html">DataStax Enterprise (DSE) 6.0</a>.&nbsp;Let me provide a quick tour of some of the enhancements found in OpsCenter 6.5.</p>
<h3>Introduction to OpsCenter</h3>
<p>Apache Cassandra has made great strides as a technology since its initial 2008 release, being deployed by companies to power their mission-critical applications. But as we know, with any distributed system, management can be difficult.</p>
<p>DataStax OpsCenter is the key piece to the tricky management puzzle, helping to surface critical issues and solving others that you couldn&rsquo;t see with just open source Apache Cassandra. From being notified of best practices, automating backups, or quickly understanding the health of your deployment, OpsCenter makes your management and monitoring push-button simple. In this blog, we&rsquo;ll see what OpsCenter 6.5 offers to further simplify your operational needs.</p>
<h3>Upgrade Service</h3>
<p>Maintaining and upgrading databases can be a daunting task. At DataStax, we understand this and want to help you. As a sequel to the successful launch of the OpsCenter LifeCycle Manager Deploy feature, the Upgrade Service allows you to seamlessly perform patch [1] upgrades of DSE clusters without sacrificing the robustness, simplicity, or peace of mind. The initial release will allow you to perform DSE patch version upgrades, a more frequently required operation than major version upgrades.</p>
<p>This release has several key features to simplify your upgrade experience:</p>
<ul>
<li>Simple and Flexible upgrade options</li>
<li>Improved robustness and auditability</li>
<li>Optimal default cluster settings</li>
</ul>
<p><img src="https://www.datastax.com/sites/default/files/content/blog/image-3.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>Fig 1: OpsCenter Upgrade Feature</p>
<h3>NodeSync Service</h3>
<p>DSE NodeSync automatically and continuously synchronizes replicas of designated keyspaces and tables of a cluster as a background process. Unlike the Repair Service, the NodeSync Service does not build a Merkle tree for comparisons and stream differences for compaction. Rather, it incrementally scans a token range, compares data one page at a time, and sends data over the standard write path.</p>
<p>OpsCenter provides a window for you to view NodeSync task statuses and take corrective measures. With the click of a button, OpsCenter allows you to enable or disable NodeSync on tables and keyspaces. Furthermore, as an admin, you will also be able to drill down and view the details at a per-table level. This allows for a much more flexible way to view the tasks, understand which tables are not being synchronized before the gc_grace_seconds period, and take corrective measures to fix the issue.</p>
<p>For more details, refer to our <a href="http://docs.datastax.com/en/latest-opscenter/opsc/online_help/services/opscBackupService.html">documentation</a> to see all the features that improve operator visibility. <img src="https://www.datastax.com/sites/default/files/content/blog/image-3.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>Fig 2: NodeSync Service</p>
<h3>New DSE Advanced Performance Metrics</h3>
<p>DSE 6 ships with a new suite of advanced performance optimizations and tools, called DSE Advanced Performance. In version 6, the new thread-per-core feature significantly boosts out-of-the-box performance for both read and write operations. The enhanced performance comes from a slick architectural design, which aims at having a non-blocking thread per CPU core, eliminating the need to coordinate with other cores and executing its assigned work at the maximum possible speed.</p>
<p>To further support this functionality, OpsCenter 6.5 adds thread-per-core metrics to enable users to assess the health of the DSE nodes and identify performance bottlenecks. We will continue to enhance our support for thread-per-core and add many more functionalities in upcoming releases to improve operator efficiency. <img src="https://www.datastax.com/sites/default/files/content/blog/image-3.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>Fig 3: Thread per core (TPC)&nbsp; Metrics</p>
<h3>Support for DSE 6</h3>
<p>OpsCenter 6.5 fully supports DSE 6 to provision, manage, and monitor your DSE clusters. We&rsquo;ve also added support for new features such as AlwaysOn SQL that&rsquo;s in <a href="https://www.datastax.com/products/datastax-enterprise-analytics">DSE</a> <a href="https://www.datastax.com/products/datastax-enterprise-analytics">Analytics</a>.</p>
<p>In addition to all of the above goodness, we&rsquo;ve spent a lot of time focussing on general product stability improvements. <img src="https://www.datastax.com/sites/default/files/content/blog/image-4.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>Fig 4: Always on SQL</p>
<h3>Conclusion</h3>
<p>In summary, this latest version of OpsCenter gives you with a wealth of new features and enhancements that make it even easier to provision and monitor DSE clusters.</p>
<p>For more information on OpsCenter 6.5, see our <a href="http://docs.datastax.com/en/latest-opscenter/">online</a> <a href="http://docs.datastax.com/en/latest-opscenter/">documentation</a>. To try OpsCenter 6.5 in your own environment, <a href="https://academy.datastax.com/downloads/ops-center">download</a> a copy today and be sure to let us know what you think.</p>
<p>DataStax is a registered trademark of DataStax, Inc. and its subsidiaries in the United States and/or other countries. Apache Cassandra and Cassandra are trademarks of the Apache Software Foundation or its subsidiaries in Canada, the United States and/or other countries.</p>
<p>[1] For example: DSE 5.0.7 to DSE 5.0.10 or DSE 5.1.2 to DSE 5.1.4</p>

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