Serverless database overview

Astra DB Serverless is a fully managed serverless database-as-a-service (DBaaS), powered by Apache Cassandra®, an open-source NoSQL distributed database. Astra DB Serverless offers two types of serverless database: Serverless (Vector) and Serverless (Non-Vector).

Serverless (Vector) database

The Serverless (Vector) database is designed for vector search applications, such as Generative AI (GenAI), semantic search, and geospatial search. The Serverless (Vector) database stores vector embeddings alongside non-vector tabular data. If you are building Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)-based applications, select the Serverless (Vector) database. A few examples of RAG applications include:

  • AI assistants or chatbots

  • Agents

  • Document questions and answers

  • Sentiment analysis

  • Personalization

  • Image, video, or audio search

Serverless (Non-Vector) database

The Serverless (Non-Vector) database is designed for generic applications, such as content management, user authentication, and transactional applications.

Namespaces versus keyspaces

As technology evolves, so does the terminology used to describe it. The Cassandra® community describes the database components with these terms: cluster, keyspace, table, and column. A keyspace is a container for tables, similar to a schema in a relational database. As language for developers has shifted, this has led to confusion among users and developers. "Namespaces," "collections," and "documents" are more familiar terms for developers. Depending on the database and features you are using in Astra Portal, you might see different terminology used.

This table shows the terminology used in Astra Portal for each database type:

Clients (Data API-based) Drivers (CQL-based)

Namespace

Keyspace

Collection

Table

Document

Row

Field

Column

The Data API and clients for Astra DB Serverless use "namespace." In the Astra Portal, you will see "keyspace" in some places, but use "namespace" when interacting with your database through the Data API or clients.

Cloud providers

Astra DB Serverless supports multiple regions across Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure.

DataStax adds new regions based on customer demand. If you don’t see your preferred region listed, please submit a support ticket or send us a message using our live chat in the bottom right of the Astra Portal.

Amazon Web Services

  • Americas

  • Asia Pacific

  • Europe, Middle East, and Africa

Region Location Serverless (Non-Vector) support Serverless (Vector) support Pricing

sa-east-1*

Sao Paulo

check

Premium Plus

us-east-1

Virginia

check

Standard

us-east-2

Ohio

check

check

Standard

us-west-2

Oregon

check

Standard

* This region is restricted to approved customers. To request access to this region, contact your Account Manager.

Region Location Serverless (Non-Vector) support Serverless (Vector) support Pricing

ap-east-1*

Hong Kong

check

Premium

ap-south-1*

Mumbai

check

check

Standard

ap-southeast-1

Singapore

check

Standard

ap-southeast-2*

Sydney

check

Premium

* This region is restricted to approved customers. To request access to this region, contact your Account Manager.

Region Location Serverless (Non-Vector) support Serverless (Vector) support Pricing

eu-central-1

Frankfurt

check

Standard

eu-west-1

Ireland

check

check

Standard

me-central-1 *

UAE

check

Standard

* This region is restricted to approved customers. To request access to this region, contact your Account Manager.

Google Cloud

  • Americas

  • Asia Pacific

  • Europe, Middle East, and Africa

Region Location Serverless (Non-Vector) support Serverless (Vector) support Pricing

northamerica-northeast1

Montréal

check

Standard

northamerica-northeast2*

Toronto

check

Standard

us-central1

Iowa

check

Standard

us-east1

South Carolina

check

check

Standard

us-east4

Virginia

check

Standard

us-west1

Oregon

check

Standard

us-west4

Las Vegas

check

Standard

* This region is restricted to approved customers. To request access to this region, contact your Account Manager.

Region Location Serverless (Non-Vector) support Serverless (Vector) support Pricing

asia-northeast1*

Tokyo

check

Standard

asia-northeast2*

Osaka

check

Standard

asia-south1

Mumbai

check

Standard

australia-southeast1

Sydney

check

Premium

* This region is restricted to approved customers. To request access to this region, contact your Account Manager.

Region Location Serverless (Non-Vector) support Serverless (Vector) support Pricing

europe-west1

Belgium

check

Standard

europe-west2

London

check

Standard

europe-west3*

Frankfurt

check

Standard

europe-west4*

Netherlands

check

Standard

* This region is restricted to approved customers. To request access to this region, contact your Account Manager.

Microsoft Azure

  • Americas

  • Asia Pacific

  • Europe, Middle East, and Africa

Region Location Serverless (Non-Vector) support Serverless (Vector) support Pricing

brazilsouth*

Sao Paulo

check

Premium Plus

canadacentral

Toronto

check

Standard

centralus*

Des Moines, Iowa

check

Standard

eastus

Virginia

check

Standard

eastus2*

Virginia

check

Standard

westus2

Washington

check

Standard

westus3

Arizona

check

check

Standard

* This region is restricted to approved customers. To request access to this region, contact your Account Manager.

Region Location Serverless (Non-Vector) support Serverless (Vector) support Pricing

australiaeast*

New South Wales

check

Premium

* This region is restricted to approved customers. To request access to this region, contact your Account Manager.

Region Location Serverless (Non-Vector) support Serverless (Vector) support Pricing

francecentral*

Paris

check

Standard

westeurope

Netherlands

check

Standard

* This region is restricted to approved customers. To request access to this region, contact your Account Manager.

Backup and restore

Active Astra DB Serverless databases are automatically backed up once an hour. The hourly backups are stored for 20 days. These backups are snapshots that include only SSTables, and do not include the commit logs. Memtables are flushed before the snapshot is recorded.

Because hibernated databases are not backed up, a database that is hibernated for more than 20 days loses all of its backups.

For databases with multiple regions, backup management is available for only the region selected when you created the database. When you restore from a backup, all regions are reset to the restored version of the primary region.

If data from your Astra DB Serverless database is accidentally deleted or corrupted, contact DataStax Support to restore data from one of the available backups.

If the database was terminated, all data is destroyed and cannot be recovered.

When restoring data, you can:

  • Restore data to the same database, replacing the current data with data from the backup. All data added to the database after the backup is no longer available in the database.

  • Restore namespaces and collections to the original namespace from which the namespace or collection was backed up.

See also

For more about Astra DB Serverless databases, see these topics:

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