Ben Lackey

<p>Containers are very effective for managing stateless applications. &nbsp;In a containerized environment, web tiers can be scaled quickly and failed containers can be quickly replaced. Tools like&nbsp;<a href="http://kubernetes.io/">Kubernetes</a>&nbsp;automate that management. &nbsp;<a href="https://cloud.google.com/container-engine/">Google Container Engine (GKE)</a>&nbsp;further simplifies the process by providing a great integration between Kubernetes and a top tier cloud provider like&nbsp;<a href="https://cloud.google.com/">Google Cloud Platform (GCP)</a>. &nbsp;Simplified management means less time spent managing machines, resulting in a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) for containerized environments than traditional virtualized environments.</p>

<p>Managing stateful workloads is more complex. &nbsp;In a stateful system, replacing failed nodes with new nodes will result in an unacceptable loss of data. &nbsp;One example of a stateful workload is a database. &nbsp;In particular, this blog post focuses on&nbsp;<a href="https://www.datastax.com/products/datastax-enterprise">DataStax Enterprise (DSE)</a>, a highly scalable distributed database built on&nbsp;<a href="http://planetcassandra.org/">Apache Cassandra</a>™.</p>

<p>Rather than separating out the web tier and the database tier, integration with GKE allows a user to deploy their entire application, including the data store in GKE and then manage its full lifecycle using Kubernetes. &nbsp;This simplifies administration, improves reliability and provides a more holistic framework for building applications than otherwise available. &nbsp;All this leads to a lower cost of ownership and improved time to market.</p>

<h1>Deploying a DSE cluster</h1>

<p>DataStax and Google have been working closely to build an integration between DSE and GKE. &nbsp;This integration is available on GitHub at:&nbsp;<a href="https://github.com/DSPN/google-container-engine-dse">https://github.com/DSPN/google-container-engine-dse</a>.</p>

<p>Deploying a cluster is really simple. &nbsp;Details instructions are given&nbsp;<a href="https://github.com/DSPN/google-container-engine-dse/blob/master/README.md">here</a>. &nbsp;At a slightly higher level, all you need to do is run the deploy.sh script.</p>
<img alt="GKE" data-align="center" data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="2990fab8-842c-44f8-8e89-2b294fb00d24" src="https://www.datastax.com/sites/default/files/inline-images/GKE-1.jpg" />
<p>Once a cluster is deployed, you can login to DataStax OpsCenter and view the DSE nodes running:</p>
<img alt="OpsCenter" data-align="center" data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="fcdfc73b-acff-4133-9e8f-c4dc25131d8e" src="https://www.datastax.com/sites/default/files/inline-images/OpsCenter.jpg" />
<h1>Wrapping Up…</h1>

<p>The integration described here is a fast way to get started using DataStax Enterprise on Google Container Engine. &nbsp;At this point, the integration is more demo grade than production. &nbsp;But, we’re actively working on improving it!</p>

<p>We welcome your thoughts and contributions for this project. &nbsp;We’re tracking issues on GitHub here:&nbsp;<a href="https://github.com/DSPN/google-container-engine-dse/issues">https://github.com/DSPN/google-container-engine-dse/issues</a>.</p>

<p>Additionally, feel free to reach out to&nbsp;<a href="mailto:ben.lackey@datastax.com">ben.lackey@datastax.com</a>&nbsp;or on Twitter @benofben.</p>


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