Amazon Keyspaces (for Apache Cassandra)

Amazon Keyspaces: How it works

The administrative overhead of operating Cassandra is eliminated with Amazon Keyspaces. It's helpful to start with Cassandra's architecture and then compare it to Amazon Keyspaces.

High-level architecture: Apache Cassandra vs. Amazon Keyspaces

Apache Cassandra is often installed in a cluster of one or more machines. As your cluster grows, you'll be in charge of managing each node and adding and removing nodes.

Cassandra is accessed using client software that connects to one of the nodes and issues Cassandra Query Language (CQL) instructions. CQL is related to SQL, the popular relational database language. CQL has a familiar interface for querying and manipulating data in Cassandra, despite the fact that it is not a relational database.

A simple Apache Cassandra cluster with four nodes is depicted in the diagram below.

Source

Hundreds of nodes running on hundreds of computer systems across one or more physical data centers could make up a Cassandra deployment. Application developers, who must provision, patch, and manage servers in addition to installing, updating, and operating software, may face a significant operational load.

We don't have to provision, patch, or manage servers using Amazon Keyspaces (for Apache Cassandra), so you can focus on developing better apps. For reads and writes, Amazon Keyspaces offers two throughput capacity modes: on-demand and provided. You may optimize the price of reads and writes by changing the throughput capacity mode of your table based on the predictability and variability of your workload.

For durability and high availability, Amazon Keyspaces (for Apache Cassandra) saves three copies of your data in multiple Availability Zones. Furthermore, you gain access to a data center and network architecture designed to suit the needs of the most security-conscious businesses. When you establish a new Amazon Keyspaces table, encryption at rest is enabled by default, and client connections require Transport Layer Security (TLS). Monitoring, AWS Identity, Access Management, and virtual private cloud (VPC) endpoints are all further AWS security features. See Security in Amazon Keyspaces for a list of all possible security capabilities (for Apache Cassandra).

The architecture of Amazon Keyspaces is depicted in the diagram below.

Source 

Client software connects to Amazon Keyspaces by issuing CQL instructions and connecting to a predetermined endpoint (hostname and port number).

Cassandra data model

Getting the most out of Amazon Keyspaces depends on how you model your data for your business case. A flawed data model can have a major impact on performance.

Despite the fact that CQL looks similar to SQL, Cassandra and relational databases have fundamentally different backends and must be treated differently. The following are some of the most critical considerations:

Storage

Tables can be used to view Cassandra data, with each row representing a record and each column representing a field within that record.

Table design: Query first

In CQL, there are no JOINS. As a result, you should plan your tables around the form of your data and how you'll access it for business purposes. De-normalization with duplicated data may happen as a result of this. Each of your tables should be built with a specific access pattern in mind.

Partitions

Partition on the disc is used to store our data. Our partition key determines the number of partitions on our data and how it is kept, and how it is dispersed among them. The way we define our partition key can have a significant impact on how fast our queries run.

Primary key

Data is saved in Cassandra as a key-value pair. As a result, every Cassandra table must have a primary key, which is the key to each table row. A mandatory partition key and optional clustering columns make up the main key. The data that makes up the primary key must be unique across all of a table's rows.

• Partition key: The partition key portion of the primary key is essential since it defines which partition of our cluster the data is stored in. A single column or a compound value made up of two or more columns can be used as the partition key. A single column partition key can result in a single partition or a small number of partitions containing the bulk of the data and hence bearing the majority of the disc I/O operations; you'd use a compound partition key.
• Clustering column: Your primary key's optional clustering column controls how data is grouped and ordered inside each division. If your primary key includes a clustering column, the clustering column can have one or more columns. If the clustering column contains multiple columns, the sorting order is determined by the order in which the columns are listed, from left to right.

Accessing Amazon Keyspaces from an application

Amazon Keyspaces (for Apache Cassandra) uses the Apache Cassandra Query Language (CQL) API, allowing you to continue using your existing CQL and Cassandra drivers. It's as simple as changing your Cassandra driver or cqlsh configuration to point to the Amazon Keyspaces service URL to update your application.

Consider the Python program below, which connects to a Cassandra cluster and executes a query against a table.

from cassandra.cluster import Cluster
#TLS/SSL configuration goes here


ksp = 'MyKeyspace'
tbl = 'WeatherData'


cluster = Cluster(['NNN.NNN.NNN.NNN'], port=NNNN)
session = cluster.connect(ksp)


session.execute('USE ' + ksp)


rows = session.execute('SELECT * FROM ' +  tbl)
for row in rows:
    print(row)

To use the same software with Amazon Keyspaces, follow these steps:

• Add the following to the cluster endpoint and port: The host can be substituted with a service endpoint like cassandra.us-east-2.amazonaws.com, and the port number with 9142.
• Add the TLS/SSL configuration.

Amazon Keyspaces use cases.

Amazon Keyspaces can be used in a variety of ways, including the following:

• Build low-latency apps — Process data at high speeds for applications, including industrial equipment maintenance, trade monitoring, fleet management, and route optimization that require single-digit millisecond latency.
• Create applications with open-source software. — Create AWS apps using open-source Cassandra APIs and drivers for a variety of programming languages, including Java, Python, Ruby, Microsoft.NET, Node.js, PHP, C++, Perl, and Go.
• Cassandra workloads should be moved to the cloud – Self-managing Cassandra tables is time-consuming and costly. We can set up, secure, and scale Cassandra tables in the AWS Cloud without managing infrastructure with Amazon Keyspaces.
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What is Cassandra Query Language (CQL)?

Apache Cassandra is the primary language for communicating with Cassandra Query Language (CQL). The CQL 3.x API is compatible with Amazon Keyspaces (for Apache Cassandra) (backward-compatible with version 2.x).

We can use one of the following methods to conduct CQL queries:

• On the AWS Management Console, use the CQL editor.
• Use the cqlsh client to run them.
• Use an Apache 2.0 licensed Cassandra client driver to run them programmatically.

Comparing Amazon Keyspaces (for Apache Cassandra) to Apache Cassandra?

To clients, Amazon Keyspaces (for Apache Cassandra) looks like a nine-node Apache Cassandra 3.11.2 cluster, and it supports Apache Cassandra 3.11.2 drivers and clients. Amazon Keyspaces is compatible with both versions 2.x and 3.x of the Cassandra Query Language (CQL) API. We may operate our Cassandra workloads on AWS using the same Cassandra application code, Apache 2.0–licensed drivers, and tools that we may use today with Amazon Keyspaces.

All standard Cassandra data-plane activities, such as creating keyspaces and tables, reading data, and writing data, are supported by Amazon Keyspaces. We don't have to provision, patch, or manage servers using Amazon Keyspaces because it's serverless. You won't have to install, maintain, or operate any software either. As a result, using Amazon Keyspaces does not necessitate using Cassandra control plane API calls to handle cluster and node configurations.

Setting such as replication factor and consistency level are automatically tuned to ensure excellent availability, durability, and performance in the single-digit millisecond range.

Functional differences: Apache Cassandra vs. Amazon Keyspaces

The functional differences between Apache Cassandra and Amazon Keyspaces are listed below.

Accessing Amazon Keyspaces (for Apache Cassandra)

You can use the console to access Amazon Keyspaces, or you can use a cqlsh client, or an Apache 2.0 licensed Cassandra driver to access it programmatically. Amazon Keyspaces supports Apache Cassandra 3.11.2 compatible drivers and clients. We must first complete the following two steps before you may use Amazon Keyspaces:

1. Signing up for AWS
2. Setting up AWS Identity and Access Management.

Step 1: Signing up for AWS

You must have an AWS account to use the Amazon Keyspaces service. When you sign up, you'll be asked to create an account if you don't already have one. If you don't utilize any of the AWS services you sign up for, you won't be charged.

To sign up for AWS:

1. Open the link, https://portal.aws.amazon.com/billing/signup.
2. Follow the online instructions.

Step 2: Setting up AWS Identity and Access Management.

AWS Identity and Access Management are used to manage access to Amazon Keyspaces resources (IAM). Policies that allow read and write access to specific resources can be attached to IAM users, roles, and federated identities using IAM. You can provide an IAM user read-only access to a subset of keyspaces and tables, for example.

The following example IAM policy allows complete read and write access to your Amazon Keyspaces resources and is solely suggested for testing purposes.

1. Create a user for AWS Identity and Access Management.
2. Create the following and assign it to the newly formed user.

{
   "Version":"2022-05-02",
   "Statement":[
      {
         "Effect":"Allow",
         "Action":[
            "cassandra:*"
         ],
         "Resource":[
            "*"
         ]
      }
   ]
}

Accessing Amazon Keyspaces using the console

In Amazon Keyspaces, you can utilize the console to conduct the following:

• Keyspaces and tables can be created, deleted, described, and listed.
• Data can be added, updated, and deleted.
• Use the CQL editor to run queries.

Ways to use partition keys effectively in Amazon Keyspaces

One or more partition key columns, which designate which partitions the data is kept in, and one or more optional clustering columns, which describe how data is clustered and ordered inside a partition, make up the primary key that uniquely identifies each row in an Amazon Keyspaces table.

Because the partition key determines the number of partitions your data is stored in and how the data is spread across these partitions, the partition key you choose can have a significant impact on query performance. In general, your program should be designed to have consistent activity across all disc partitions.

Distributing your application's read and write overall activity partitions helps to reduce throughput costs, and this applies to both on-demand and provisions read/write capacity modes. If you use provisioned capacity mode, for example, you may assess the access patterns required by your application and estimate the total read capacity units (RCU) and write capacity units (WCU) needed by each table. If the traffic against a given partition does not exceed 3,000 RCUs or 1,000 WCUs, Amazon Keyspaces supports your access patterns utilizing the throughput that you provisioned.

Data protection in Amazon Keyspaces

Data protection in Amazon Keyspaces is governed by the AWS shared responsibility paradigm (for Apache Cassandra). As seen in this architecture, AWS is in charge of safeguarding the global infrastructure that underpins the whole AWS Cloud. You are in charge of keeping your material hosted on this infrastructure under your control. The security configuration and administration activities for the AWS services you use are covered in this material. See the Data Privacy FAQ for additional information about data privacy.

We recommend using AWS Identity and Access Management to protect AWS account credentials and set up individual user accounts for data security reasons (IAM). As a result, each user is only given the rights they need to do their job obligations. We also advise you to protect your data in the following ways:

• With each account, use multi-factor authentication (MFA).
• To communicate with AWS resources, use SSL/TLS. TLS 1.2 or later is recommended.
• AWS CloudTrail could be used to log into API and user activity.
• Use AWS encryption solutions, as well as all of AWS's basic security settings.
• Utilize advanced managed security services like Amazon Macie, which aids in the discovery and protection of sensitive data stored in Amazon S3.
• Use a FIPS endpoint if you need FIPS 140-2 verified cryptographic modules while connecting to AWS via a command-line interface or API.

We strongly advise against entering confidential or sensitive information, such as email addresses, into tags or free-form fields like the Name box. This includes using the console, API, AWS CLI, or AWS SDKs to interact with Amazon Keyspaces or other AWS services. Any information you give in tags or free-form fields for names may be utilized for billing or diagnostic purposes. If you submit a URL to an external server, we strongly advise you not to include credentials information in the URL so that the server can validate your request.

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FAQs

What are some Amazon Keyspaces use cases?

To build low-latency apps, creating applications with open-source software and the Cassandra workloads should be moved to the cloud.

Are empty strings supported by Amazon Keyspaces?

Empty strings and blob values are supported by Amazon Keyspaces.

How is CQL different from SQL?

In CQL, there is a table design query first. There are also no JOINS in CQL, and the partition on the disc is used to store our data. Data is saved in Cassandra as a key-value pair, i.e.,  partition key and clustering column form.

Conclusion

In this article, we have extensively discussed Amazon Keyspaces for Apache Cassandra. We hope that this blog has helped you enhance your knowledge and aspects that you should keep in mind while dealing with the Amazon Keyspaces for Apache Cassandra; you will also like this article on the comparison between AWS vs Azure and Google clouds and AWS console mobile application. If you would like to learn more, check out our articles here. Do upvote our blog to help other ninjas grow. 

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