DataStax has launched a certified, bare bones distribution of Apache Cassandra for those situations where you want to use the open source NoSQL database, but don’t want to pay for the mission critical bells and whistles of the company’s enterprise version.

The DataStax Distribution of Apache Cassandra consists of DataStax’ production certified Cassandra release, along with bulk load utilities, drivers, and pro support.

Around 500 customers use DataStax Enterprise product for heavy data lifting, and mission critical applications, Robin Schumacher, chief product officer, told us.

This is not where DDAC is aimed. Schumacher said the firm expected the certified release would be used in development or other internal setups, where if the system goes down no one gets hurt – or even worse, put out of business.

These are applications where companies might have chosen to use open source Cassandra, but would rather not, he said, because doing so means “you’re getting into the database business” managing bugs and patches and the like.

Schumacher said the product was equivalent to and backwards compatible with the open source version of Cassandra. It will not include the kernel enhancements the company claims makes it enterprise version two to three times faster than the open source version. It also only gets basic security, and none of the automatic management services, tier-storage and mutli-instance features of its Enterprise sibling. You can see a full list of what DDAC does, and doesn’t have, here.

But then again, Schmacher said it would be “orders of magnitude lower” in price than the Enterprise offering.

It’s tricky to know exactly what this amounts to, as the company doesn’t publish pricing. However, Schumacher told us it would, like its pricier siblings, be an annual subscription.