After launching its base product back in February 2011, Apache Cassandra focused company DataStax has announced a free version of its OpsCenter platform for the Cassandra open-source distributed database management system.

As a platform for managing, monitoring, and operating web and enterprise Cassandra applications, OpsCenter free edition comes with all the capabilities of the production version, including visualization of the cluster, comprehensive management configuration, and health and performance monitoring.

DataStax says that the free version of OpsCenter can be used in any test and development environment, but it is not for production usage. Essentially, this product is a monitoring tool for Cassandra clusters, with a degree of capacity planning also included.

Full production usage of DataStax OpsCenter is offered on a subscription basis — and in much the same way that Cloudera provides Apache Hadoop-based software and services, DataStax has combined product and support subscriptions, so that users can't buy one without the other.

According to the DataCenter Cassandra Developer Center, "To use OpsCenter in production, it must be purchased and is bundled with DataStax's tiered Cassandra support services — giving customers all of the advanced tools, expert assistance, and proven support needed to rely on Cassandra for their most demanding and mission-critical use cases."