The brave new world created by cloud, IoT and mobile devices, and always-available customer engagements has presented enterprises with many opportunities to innovate, expand their business, and get closer to customers. In order to improve application performance and increase business agility, many enterprises have decided to move modern workloads from relational databases to NoSQL ones like Apache Cassandra®. Unlike relational databases, Cassandra is world renowned for its linear scalability, always-on availability, and blisteringly fast write-read performance that enterprises have found a good fit for modern workloads. (Learn more about the future state of data modernization).
As with any transformation projects, migrating workloads from RDBMS to Cassandra is not straightforward. Many enterprises are stuck because there is a dearth of tools, skilled resources, and partners who can help with migrations, modernization strategy, and execution. To alleviate this problem, DataStax has developed the RDBMS-to-Apache Cassandra accelerator, a comprehensive set of tools that enable enterprises to assess, plan, and design the migration of RDBMS workloads to Cassandra.
The accelerator provides a quick and easy way to probe the source relational database, assess the relational tables, relations, query patterns, and stored procedures of the workloads that enterprises want to migrate. These assets, once discovered, make an excellent starting point for planning the microservices that should be developed in the applications. The assessment and planning tools of the accelerator are accessible from a single GUI, allowing you to visually explore and analyze the assets. The accelerator also makes the job of developing on Cassandra a little easier. Based on rules that have been formed through more than a decade of experience, the accelerator recommends a target Cassandra data model, which developers can further fine tune.
Here is an overview of the tools available in the accelerator (refer to the blue boxes in the below diagram).
Assessment
- Source database Inventory / Metadata / Logs Extractors enable you to extract relational database schema, metadata, query logs, session logs, tables, joins, triggers, stored procedures, etc.
Planning & Design
- Source Table and Source Query Analyzers enable you to methodically examine the logs, tables, query patterns, frequency of queries, etc.
- Relationship Cluster Builder enables you to view related source tables
- Cassandra Schema Modeler/Recommender enables you to review and edit recommended Cassandra schema, and define and finalize your Cassandra physical schema
- Model Verification utility enables you to validate source vs target data type mismatches, and compare source vs target models and queries.
Blue box: tools in the new RDBMS-to-Apache Cassandra Accelerator by DataStax
Orange box: core data migration tools by DataStax
Green box: other migration tools typically brought by clients
On the services side, DataStax is offering the RDBMS-to-Apache Cassandra Migration Assessment and Strategy Package, built around the accelerator. Taking advantage of the services along with the accelerator and core data migration tools by DataStax can reduce the migration timeframe by as much as two-thirds. You will be well on your way to modernizing your applications and migrating your data seamlessly, and achieving the desired outcomes of better application performance and improved business agility.
Learn more about the new RDBMS-to-Apache Cassandra Accelerator and its related services package, or contact us to schedule a free initial consultation. We will help you develop a comprehensive strategy for migrating your relational monoliths to Cassandra.
