INTRODUCTION TO

APACHE CASSANDRA
Gökhan Atıl
GÖKHAN ATIL
➤ Database Administrator

➤ Oracle ACE Director (2016)


ACE (2011)

➤ 10g/11g and R12 Oracle Certified Professional (OCP)

➤ Co-author of Expert Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c

➤ Founding Member and Vice President of TROUG

➤ Blogger (since 2008) gokhanatil.com

➤ Twitter: @gokhanatil

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INTRODUCTION TO APACHE CASSANDRA
➤ What is Apache Cassandra? Why to use it?

➤ Cassandra Architecture

➤ Cassandra Query Language (CQL)

➤ Cassandra Data Modeling

➤ How to install and run Cassandra?

➤ Cassandra nodetool

➤ Backup and Recovery

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WHAT IS APACHE CASSANDRA? WHY TO USE IT?
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WHAT IS APACHE CASSANDRA? WHY TO USE IT?
➤ Fast Distributed (Column Family NoSQL) Database
High availability
Linear Scalability
High Performance
➤ Fault tolerant on Commodity Hardware
➤ Multi-Data Center Support
➤ Easy to operate
➤ Proven: CERN, Netflix, eBay, GitHub, Instagram, Reddit

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HIGH AVAILABILITY: CAP THEOREM AND CASSANDRA

RDBMS Availability

Atomicity Consistency
 Partition

Consistency (ACID) Tolerance
Isolation
Durability

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HIGH AVAILABILITY: THE RING

NO MASTER NO SLAVE

p
ssi
go e !
nl in
m o
I'
gossip

PEER TO
PEER

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LINEAR SCALABILITY

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CASSANDRA ARCHITECTURE
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CASSANDRA PARTITIONS

EMAIL NAME PHONE

gokhan@ Gokhan 542xxxxxxx
aylin@ Aylin 532xxxxxxx
ilayda@ Ilayda 532xxxxxxx

PRIMARY KEY partitioner

PARTITION KEY, CLUSTERING KEY

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REPLICATION FACTOR

EMAIL
gokhan@

Murmur3Partitioner

# 60

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WRITE PATH (CLUSTER)

coordinator
client
node

hinted
hand off

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 WRITE PATH (NODE)

memtable
flush

mem
disk

commit log SSTable SSTable SSTable

compaction

➤ Logging data in the commit log ➤ Flushing to (immutable)

SSTables (Sorted Strings Table)
➤ Writing data to the memtable

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READ PATH (CLUSTER)

est
e s t
ig

dig
d

coordinator data
client
node

➤ Read Repair: repair during read path using digest and timestamp

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 READ PATH (NODE)

found
memtable row (read) cache

no

partition partition key

maybe bloom filter

summary cache (maybe or no)

mem found
disk

partition index SSTable

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CONSISTENCY LEVELS

ANY (write only) at least one node

at least one/two/three replica

ONE, TWO, THREE
node
a quorum (N/2+1) of replica
QUORUM
nodes across all datacenters
a quorum (N/2+1) of replica
LOCAL_QUORUM
nodes in the same datacenter

ALL on all replica nodes

➤ Formula for Strong Consistency: R + W > N

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CASSANDRA QUERY LANGUAGE (CQL)
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CASSANDRA QUERY LANGUAGE (CQL)

➤ Create a Keyspace (Database):


create keyspace demo with replication = { 'class' :
'SimpleStrategy', 'replication_factor' :1 };
➤ Remove a keyspace:

drop keyspace demo;
➤ Select a keyspace to operate:

use demo;

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CASSANDRA QUERY LANGUAGE (CQL)
➤ Create a table:

create table demo.democlients ( email text, name text,
phone text, primary key (email, name));
➤ Alter a table:
 EMAIL: PARTITION KEY
NAME: CLUSTERING KEY
alter table democlients add money int;
➤ Remove a table:

drop table democlients;
➤ Remove all rows in a table:

truncate table democlients;

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CASSANDRA QUERY LANGUAGE (CQL)
➤ Retrieve rows:

select * from democlients where name='Gokhan Atil'
ALLOW FILTERING; -- or create a secondary index
➤ Retrieve distinct values:
 EMAIL: PARTITION KEY

select DISTINCT email from democlients;

➤ Limit the number of rows returned:

select * from democlients LIMIT 1;
➤ Sort the result:

select * from democlients where email='gokhan at
gokhanatil.com' ORDER by name DESC;
NAME: CLUSTERING KEY
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CASSANDRA QUERY LANGUAGE (CQL)
➤ Retrieve the results in the JSON format:

select JSON * from democlients;
➤ Insert a row:

insert into democlients (email, name, phone) values
('gokhan at gokhanatil.com','Gokhan Atil','542' ) IF NOT
EXISTS;
➤ Insert a row with TTL (Time to live - seconds):

insert into democlients (email, name, phone) values ('info
at gokhanatil.com','Information','542' ) USING TTL 10;

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CASSANDRA QUERY LANGUAGE (CQL)
➤ Update records:

update democlients set phone='535' where
email='gokhan at gokhanatil.com' and 

name='Gokhan' IF EXISTS;
➤ Update records with a condition:

update democlients set money=20 where email='gokhan
at gokhanatil.com' and name='Gokhan Atil' 

IF phone='542';
➤ Delete rows:

delete from democlients where email='gokhan at
gokhanatil.com' IF EXISTS;

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CASSANDRA QUERY LANGUAGE (CQL)
➤ Delete row with a condition:

delete from democlients where email='gokhan at
gokhanatil.com' and name='Gokhan Atil' IF money > 10;
➤ Delete columns in a row:

delete money from democlients where email='gokhan at
gokhanatil.com' and name='Gokhan Atil';

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CASSANDRA DATA MODELING
➤ Query-Driven Data Modeling

➤ Spread data evenly across the cluster

➤ Use Denormalization

➤ Be careful about using secondary indexes

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HOW TO INSTALL AND RUN CASSANDRA?
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HOW TO INSTALL AND RUN CASSANDRA CLUSTER?
➤ Make sure you have JDK (8u40 or newer) installed
➤ Download apache-cassandra-VERSION-bin.tar.gz
➤ Extract the file to a folder
➤ Make data and logs directories in cassandra folder
➤ Run bin/cassandra

➤ Edit the configuration file (conf/cassandra.yaml)

➤ Give a name to cluster, change listening address, data and logs
directory locations, enable authentication and authorization.

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HOW TO INSTALL AND RUN CASSANDRA CLUSTER?
➤ User docker to pull the latest image:

docker pull cassandra

➤ Run it as standalone:

docker run --name cas1 -p 9042:9042 -e
CASSANDRA_CLUSTER_NAME=MyCluster -d cassandra

➤ Connect using clqsh:


docker exec -it cas1 cqlsh

➤ Run nodetool (i.e for check status):


docker exec -it cas1 nodetool status

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CASSANDRA NODETOOL
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CASSANDRA NODETOOL
➤ Get a quick summary of the node:

nodetool info

➤ Get version of Cassandra:


nodetool version

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CASSANDRA NODETOOL
➤ Get status of the cluster/keyspace:

nodetool status <keyspace_name>

➤ View the network statistics of the node:


nodetool netstats
➤ Get information of a table:

nodetool cfstats <keyspace_name.table_name>

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CASSANDRA NODETOOL
➤ Repair a node (you can run it weekly on non-peak hours):

nodetool repair

➤ Cleanup of keys no longer belonging to a node:


nodetool cleanup

➤ Start a major compaction process:


nodetool compact

➤ Check the compaction process:


nodetool compactionstats

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CASSANDRA NODETOOL
➤ Decommission a node (to prepare to remove it):

nodetool decommission <node_UUID>

➤ Remove a dead/or decommissioned node from the cluster:


nodetool removenode <node_UUID>

➤ Take a snapshot (for backup):


nodetool snapshot

➤ Remove previous snapshots:


nodetool clearsnapshot

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BACKUP AND RECOVERY
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BACKUP AND RECOVERY
➤ Back up a cluster:
1. Take a snapshot of each node.
2. Move the snapshots to another storage (S3 bucket?)
3. Clean all the snapshots
➤ Restore node(s):
➤ Make sure schema exists
➤ Truncate table
➤ Copy most recent snapshots to a directory. Its name should
be formatted as "keyspace/tablename". Run:

sstableloader -d <nodeip> keyspace/tablename
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BUILD A BACKUP NODE
➤ Use multi-DC replication:

CREATE KEYSPACE "MyKeyspace"

WITH replication = { 

'class' : 'NetworkTopologyStrategy',

'datacenter1' : 3, 'datacenter2' : 1 };

snapshots

RF=3
client

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QUESTIONS?
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Blog: www.gokhanatil.com Twitter: @gokhanatil