Check out all the new features and updates added to our platform over the last few months!
As always, if you have specific feature requests or improvement ideas you’d love to see, please get in touch with us.
Major Announcements:
Apache Cassandra®
NetApp is excited to announce that the Instaclustr Platform now supports the use of AWS PrivateLink to connect to Apache Cassandra clusters running on the platform. This new feature provides customers running on AWS with a more secure option for inter-VPC connectivity. Log into the console today to include support for AWS PrivateLink with your AWS Managed Cassandra clusters with just one click!
OpenSearch®
With the release of searchable snapshots, customers can now utilize the feature as a solution for storing and searching data in a more cost- and time-efficient way. Interested in trying out searchable snapshots for yourself? Reach out to our friendly Support team today and get started!
Other Significant Changes:
Apache Cassandra
- Customer Initiated Resize Vertical Scaling with GCP and Azure is now available with Apache Cassandra® on the Instaclustr Managed Platform, allowing customers to add more disk space or scale up and down processing capacity on-demand, without downtime to their services, and without the intervention of Instaclustr Support.
Apache Kafka®
- Instaclustr for Apache Kafka® With KRaft Support and Apache Kafka® Connect 3.6.1 was released as generally available on Instaclustr Platform. This is the first release on our managed platform to support KRaft mode as GA.
- We’ve added support for custom Subject Alternative Names (SAN) on AWS, making it easier for our customers to use internal DNS to connect to their managed Kafka clusters without needing to use IP addresses. Customers wanting to make use of this should reach out to us via our Support. Self-serve capabilities are coming soon.
OpenSearch
- OpenSearch 1.3.14 and Open Search 2.11 are now in general availability on the Instaclustr Platform.
- Dedicated Ingest Nodes for OpenSearch® is released as general availability.
PostgreSQL®
- Support for the pgvector open source extension for similarity search is now available as an add-on to your Instaclustr for PostgreSQL. The pgvector extension provides the ability to store and search ML-generated vector type data.
- Azure Custom Virtual Network (VNet) support to PostgreSQL clusters has been added, enabling Instaclustr Managed PostgreSQL clusters and many types of Azure resources to securely communicate with each other, the internet, and on-premises networks.
- High-Availability Multi-Region Replication now offers added support on Instaclustr Managed PostgreSQL. This feature provide customer with a robust reliable backup, even in the face of a complete regional outage
- PostgreSQL versions 16.1, 15.5, 14.10 and 13.13 are now in general availability.
Ocean for Apache Spark™
- Since customers are now executing many Spark Streaming workloads on Ocean Spark, our product was optimized to accommodate these longer-running applications. The console was redesigned so that streaming workloads are more easily distinguished from batch workloads. The zoom-widget and axes on charts were upgraded so that data scientists can more easily identify errors and performance bottlenecks. Log collection techniques were enhanced so that more data is available for troubleshooting.
- We have completed our external audit and received a report that Ocean Spark complies with SOC 2 Type I.
Instaclustr Managed Platform
- Added support for Microsoft Social SSO on the Instaclustr Platform, allowing users to securely and effortlessly sign up and access the Instaclustr Platform using their Microsoft credentials.
- Added support for Hyderabad (AWS, ap-south-2) and Dammam (GCP, me-central2) regions for Cassandra, OpenSearch, and Kafka.
Upcoming Releases:
Apache Cassandra
- Instaclustr by NetApp is currently developing support for Apache Cassandra 5.0. This new version will offer our customers access to exciting new features such as vector search and storage-attached indexes. The new version will soon be released for public preview on the Instaclustr Managed Platform and can be used for testing purposes in a non-production environment. Keep an eye out for updates and a release announcement.
Cadence®
- Shared Production infrastructure is to be introduced soon, enabling a lower entry price point for Cadence production usage. This will extend the Developer Shared Infrastructure offering to support 2-node Cadence clusters with new node sizes.
Ocean for Apache Spark
- Application Configuration Templates will be enhanced with finer-grained permissions. This will enable administrators to improve partition memory and processor resources among teams, enforce standards for running applications, and to better protect security configurations.
OpenSearch
- StorageGRID for OpenSearch will be enabled on the Instaclustr Managed Platform, allowing Instaclustr by NetApp to offer an on-prem OpenSearch product offering and provide an on-prem object storage solution for OpenSearch back-ups that is S3 compatible.
Instaclustr Managed Platform
- Instaclustr will be soon accessible as a SaaS subscription on the Azure Marketplace, allowing customers to allocate Instaclustr spend towards any Microsoft commit they might have. Stay tuned for the announcements from Instaclustr.
- Instaclustr will soon release customer-viewable action logs—a new feature that allows permitted users to view and search the log of actions performed by all the users within an account or organization. This feature will be helpful for audit and compliance activities.
Instaclustr Enterprise Support
- We will soon offer Enterprise Support for Apache Spark™. Keep an eye out for the announcement on our website.
Did you know?
Recently, Instaclustr by NetApp completed the largest new customer onboarding migration exercise in our history—and it’s quite possibly the largest Apache Cassandra and Apache Kafka migration exercise ever completed by anyone! In this blog we walk through the overall process and provide details of our approach.
