Cassandra: The Definitive Guide, (Revised) Third Edition, 3rd Edition

Chapter 10. Configuring and Deploying Cassandra

In this chapter, you’ll build your first cluster and look at the available options for configuring Cassandra nodes, including aspects of Cassandra that affect node behavior in a cluster, such as partitioning, snitches, and replication. We will also share a few pieces of advice as you work toward deploying Cassandra in production. We’ll discuss options to consider in planning deployments and deploying Cassandra in various cloud environments.

Cassandra Cluster Manager

Out of the box, Cassandra works with no configuration at all; you can simply download, decompress, and execute the program to start the server with its default configuration. However, one of the things that makes Cassandra such a powerful technology is its emphasis on configurability and customization. At the same time, the number of options may seem confusing at first.

In order to get practice in building and configuring a cluster, let’s take advantage of a tool called the Cassandra Cluster Manager or ccm. Built by Sylvain Lebresne and several other contributors, this tool is a set of Python scripts that allow you to run a multinode cluster on a single machine. This allows you to quickly configure a cluster without having to provision additional hardware. It’s also a great way to introduce some of the most commonly configured options, as discussed in the Cassandra documentation.

Creating Cassandra Clusters for Testing

It’s often convenient when developing ...