Apache HBase is a distributed data store that is in production today at many enterprises and sites serving large volumes of near-real-time random-accesses. As Apache HBase matures, the community has augmented the system with new features that many enterprise consider to be hard requirements. We will discuss how the upcoming HBase 0.96 release addresses many of these shortcomings by introducing new features that will help the administrator monitor and control access to the system, and new mechanisms to minimize downtime due to expected and unexpected outages.