Important Announcement Regarding Cassandra 3.x End-of-Life Support

In September 2024, with Apache Cassandra 5.0 going GA, the Apache Cassandra project team officially announced that the end-of-life (EOL) for Cassandra 3.x (3.0 and 3.11.x). Read the official announcement.

In response, NetApp Instaclustr made Cassandra 5.0 generally available on our platform the same day and extended support for Cassandra 3.x by an additional 12 months to give customers sufficient time to plan and upgrade clusters for a smooth transition. Now, as we approach the final phase of the extended support window, we are sharing important updates regarding the lifecycle of Cassandra 3.x on the NetApp Instaclustr managed platform.

Lifecycle Support Transition

You can read more about our lifecycle policies on our website.

Upgrade Path and Version Availability

We strongly recommend that customers currently using Cassandra version 3.x plan upgrades to avoid disruption (if you haven’t already done so). Upgrading ensures your clusters remain secure, supported, and continue to receive production SLA support.

Managed Service Customers

NetApp Instaclustr managed platform customers can upgrade directly from Cassandra 3.11.19 to one of these supported Generally Available Cassandra 4 versions:

• Cassandra 4.0.17 or newer supported version(for the 4.0.x major version).
• Cassandra 4.1.8 or newer supported version (for the 4.1.x major version).

You can find all supported Cassandra versions, along with their lifecycle states here. Please contact our support team to find which version best fits your workloads.

Enterprise Support Customers

For our enterprise support customers, we recommend upgrading your Cassandra 3.x clusters to Cassandra 4.x versions—if you haven’t already done so—depending on your workload compatibility and readiness. Failure to upgrade within the extended support period may prevent you from receiving any support unless explicitly agreed upon. Our Support team is available to assist you with the upgrades.

Cassandra 4.x introduces major improvements over 3.x—including faster and safer streaming, enhanced incremental repair support, audit logging, improved I/O performance, and enterprise-grade stability. Read more about what’s new in Cassandra 4.x.

Upgrading to Cassandra 4.x is also the required pathway to move to Cassandra 5.0, which brings a wide range of new features and enables modern use cases such as AI/ML workloads through vector search and advanced indexing.

Important: Cipher Suite Requirements in Cassandra 4 and Above

As part of the transition to Cassandra 4.x or later, managed platform clusters with client encryption enabled must use the following secure cipher suites:

• TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384
• TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256

The above allowed cipher suites have been selected based on improving security posture and compliance requirements. As a result, the reduced cipher suite list will simplify both client and cluster configuration and minimizes the chance of misconfigurations that could expose systems to vulnerabilities due to the use of weak ciphers.

For more details on supported ciphers and how to update client applications with the above ciphers, please refer to our documentation.

What’s Next

To ensure a smooth transition:

• Review your existing Cassandra 3.x deployments.
• Ensure your client applications (if encryption is enabled) are updated to use the supported cipher suites.

Our support team is actively coordinating Cassandra 3.x upgrades with many customers and will continue working with others to complete the remaining transitions. If you haven’t started your upgrade or anticipate challenges meeting the November 30 deadline, please contact us as soon as possible to discuss your scheduling needs and ensure a smooth transition.

If you have any further questions or need clarification, don’t hesitate to reach out to our support team.