🏠 Back to home | Written by Cedrick Lunven, Last Update 2/10/2021

The Astra token creation procedure is also described in the reference documentation

To initialize a secured 2-way TLS connection between clients and Astra x509 certificates are needed. The strong authentication is key for maximum security and still benefit from greatest drivers features(health-check, load-balancing, fail-over). Under the hood the protocol SNI over TCP is used to contact each node independently.

The configuration and required certificates are provided to user through a zip file called the secure connect bundle that can be downloaded for each DATABASE REGION. Meaning a database deployed across multiple regions will have one secure connect bundle per region. (1 region = 1 underlying Apache Cassandra™ datacenter)

• You should have an Astra account
• You should Create and Astra Database

Once signed in Astra the list of available databases is located in the menu on the left.

• Select the database you want to work with by clicking on it.

• Click on the TAB CONNECT or the big blue button [CONNECT] on the top right hand corner.

• On this screen look for Connect using a driver. You can pick any of the options Node.js (javascript), Python or Java. It will be the same file downloaded.

• Click on Download Bundle and eventually select the region you want to use

• Click on target region to be able to copy the link locally.

• Most browsers will give you the option to open the zip file directly. Do not do that, save it whole instead: the bundle zipfile will be passed to the drivers as it is!

• The generated link to the bundle zipfile will expire a few minutes after it is generated. If you download the bundle much later after you have reached the "Connect" page, you might end up with a faulty bundle. As a check, make sure the zipfile you downloaded is around 12-13 KiB in size.

• Video on How to use the Secure Connect Bundle