Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Configuring a Cassandra cluster
Now that you have a single node setup, you may start Cassandra by executing
<cas-
sandra_installation>/bin/cassandra
for a tarball install or by running
sudo
service cassandra start
for a repository install. (We'll see later in this chapter
how to write a
.init
script for Cassandra and set it up to start on boot.) However, in or-
der to get a Cassandra cluster working, a couple of configuration tweaks are required.
If you look at
cassandra.yaml
, you will find that it has the following six sections:
•
Cluster setup properties
: These are basically startup properties, file location,
ports, replica placement strategies, and internode communication settings.
•
Performance tuning properties
: These help in setting up appropriate values for
system and/or network resources on the basis of your setup.
•
Client connection properties
: These help in setting up the behavior of client-to-
node connectivity, namely the number of requests per client or maximum number
of threads (clients).
•
Internode communication
: This section contains configurations for node-to-node
communication within a cluster. These include hinted handoff settings and failure
detection settings.
•
Backup settings
: These settings are Cassandra-automated backup items.
•
Authorization and authentication settings
: These provide protected access to the
cluster. The default is to allow all.
In most cases, you will never have to bother about client connection properties and inter-
node communication settings. Even, by default, the configuration is very smart and robust
for any modern-day computer. The rest of this chapter will discuss the cluster setup proper-
ties and various options that Cassandra provides out of the box. Security will be discussed
briefly. In
Chapter 5
,
Performance Tuning
, we will tune Cassandra using various properties
in
cassandra.yaml
.
