Cassandra High Performance Cookbook (Quick Answers to Common Problems)

You can mine deep into the full capabilities of Apache Cassandra using the 150+ recipes in this indispensable Cookbook. From configuring and tuning to using third party applications, this is the ultimate guide.

Overview

• Get the best out of Cassandra using this efficient recipe bank
• Configure and tune Cassandra components to enhance performance
• Deploy Cassandra in various environments and monitor its performance
• Well illustrated, step-by-step recipes to make all tasks look easy!

What you will learn from this book

• Interact with Cassandra using the command line interface
• Write programs that access data in Cassandra
• Configure and tune Cassandra components to enhance performance
• Model data to optimize storage and access
• Use tunable consistency to optimize data access
• Deploy Cassandra in single and multiple data center environments
• Monitor the performance of Cassandra
• Manage a cluster by joining and removing nodes
• Use libraries and third party applications with Cassandra
• Integrate Cassandra with Hadoop

Approach

This is a cookbook and all tasks are approached as recipes. A recipe describes a task and outlines the steps necessary to complete this task.

Some recipes in the book are examples of writing code. An example of this is a recipe that stores and accesses the entries of a phone book in Cassandra. The recipe consists of a description of the program, a full code example is given, the example is run, the output is displayed, and finally the how it works section describes the process or code in greater detail.

Other recipes in the book describe a task. An example of this is a recipe that takes a snapshot back up of data in Cassandra. This recipe contains a description of the process, it then shows how to run the snapshot command and confirm that it worked, it then explains what the snapshot command does behind the scenes, finally the 'see also' section references other related recipes such as the recipe to restore a snapshot.

Who this book is written for

This book is designed for administrators, developers, and data architects who are interested in Apache Cassandra for redundant, highly performing, and scalable data storage. Typically these users should have experience working with a database technology, multiple node computer clusters, and high availability solutions.

In Detail

Apache Cassandra is a fault-tolerant, distributed data store which offers linear scalability allowing it to be a storage platform for large high volume websites.

This book provides detailed recipes that describe how to use the features of Cassandra and improve its performance. Recipes cover topics ranging from setting up Cassandra for the first time to complex multiple data center installations. The recipe format presents the information in a concise actionable form.

The book describes in detail how features of Cassandra can be tuned and what the possible effects of tuning can be. Recipes include how to access data stored in Cassandra and use third party tools to help you out. The book also describes how to monitor and do capacity planning to ensure it is performing at a high level. Towards the end, it takes you through the use of libraries and third party applications with Cassandra and Cassandra integration with Hadoop.

Edward Capriolo

Edward Capriolo is currently System Administrator at Media6degrees where he helps design and maintain distributed data storage systems for the internet advertising industry. Edward is a member of the Apache Software Foundation and a committer for the Hadoop-Hive project. He has experience as a developer as well Linux and network administrator and enjoys the rich world of open source software.