Installation

The following is the installation and the configuration of Cassandra.

Prerequisties

• Oracle Java 8+ or OpenJDK 8+

# add oracle java 8 repository
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java

# update the repository
$ sudo apt-get update

# install oracle java 8
$ sudo apt-get install oracle-java8-installer

# verify the java version
$ java -version

# (optional) configurate java environment
$ sudo apt-get install oracle-java8-set-default

# edit the environment and set the next two line
# remember to signout for environment variable settings
$ sudo vim /etc/environment 

# add the following to the environment
JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-oracle
JRE_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-oracle/jre

• Install Python2.7

# install required packages
$ sudo apt-get install -y build-essential checkinstall libreadline-gplv2-dev libncursesw5-dev libssl-dev libsqlite3-dev tk-dev libgdbm-dev libc6-dev libbz2-dev

# download and extract Python 2.7.x
$ cd /usr/src
$ sudo wget https://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.7.13/Python-2.7.13.tgz
$ sudo tar xzf Python-2.7.13.tgz

# Compile Python source
$ cd Python-2.7.13
$ sudo ./configure
$ sudo make altinstall

Install on Ubuntu 16.04

# add Apache Repository of Cassandra 3.6+
$ echo "deb http://www.apache.org/dist/cassandra/debian 36x main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/cassandra.sources.list

# add Apache Cassandra Repository Key
$ curl https://www.apache.org/dist/cassandra/KEYS | sudo apt-key add -

# Update the Repository
$ sudo apt-get update

# Install Cassandra
$ sudo apt-get install -y cassandra

Cassandra service default settings

• Cassandra runs as the service.

$ sudo service cassandra start|stop|restart|status
$ sudo systemctl start|stop|restart|status cassandra

• Cassandra provides a tool for controling nodes.

$ nodetool status

• default location of the configuration : /etc/cassandra
• default location of log directories : /var/log/cassandra/
• default location of data directories : /var/lib/cassandra

Cassandra configuration

• Most of Configuration is defined via yaml properties on /etc/cassandra/cassandra.yaml (refer to official document)

  • cluster_name: the name of your cluster.
  • seeds: a comma separated list of the IP addresses of your cluster seeds.
  • storage_port: you don’t necessarily need to change this but make sure that there are no firewalls blocking this port.
  • listen_address: the IP address of your node, this is what allows other nodes to communicate with this node so it is important that you change it. Alternatively, you can set listen_interface to tell Cassandra which interface to use, and consecutively which address to use. Set only one, not both.
  • native_transport_port: as for storage_port, make sure this port is not blocked by firewalls as clients will communicate with Cassandra on this port.

• Location of directories (refer to official document)

  • data_file_directories: one or more directories where data files are located.
  • commitlog_directory: the directory where commitlog files are located.
  • saved_caches_directory: the directory where saved caches are located.
  • hints_directory: the directory where hints are located.

• Environment variables (refer to official document)

  • cassandra-env.sh : Edit JVM-level settings such as heap size, any additional JVM command line argument to the JVM_OPTS environment variable.

• Logging (refer to official document)

  • Cassandra uses logback as the logger.
  • The logging properties is located on logback.xml.
  • It will log at INFO level into a file called system.log, and at DEBUG level into a file called debug.log.