You are correct. Cassandra no longer allows invalid DC names for NetworkTopologyStrategy in CREATE KEYSPACE or ALTER KEYSPACE from 4.0 ( CASSANDRA-12681 <https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-12681>). FWIW, here is the NEWS.txt <https://github.com/apache/cassandra/blob/cassandra-4.0.0/NEWS.txt#L190-L195> entry for reference. I'm not aware of a hack that would circumvent the validation. Cheers!
>
