Apache Cassandra: Core Concepts, Skills and Tools

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Overview: This course teaches the fundamentals of Cassandra 2.0 architecture, installation, configuration, CQL, administration, and tooling. It serves as the foundation for other DataStax training courses.
Length: 3 days
Prerequisites: Prior software administration or development experience
Audience: Administrators and developers seeking to use Apache Cassandra 2.0. This course serves as a foundation and prerequisite for other DataStax Training courses.
Environment: Virtual Machine pre-configured with Cassandra, related tooling, and exercise files.


Learning Objectives

Introducing Big Data and Cassandra

  • Understand Big Data
  • Describe Apache Cassandra
  • Understand common use cases
  • Survey the Cassandra architecture

Installing, configuring and running Cassandra locally

  • Prepare the operating system
  • Select and install a Cassandra version
  • Configure Cassandra for a single node
  • Start and stop a Cassandra instance

Introducing the Cassandra Data Model and Cassandra Query Language

  • Describe the Cassandra data model
  • Introduce cqlsh
  • Describe the DDL subset of CQL
  • Introduce DevCenter
  • Describe the DML subset of CQL
  • Understand basics of data modeling for Cassandra

Introducing Cassandra tools

  • Configure nodes and clusters using CCM
  • Introduce and use cqlsh shell commands
  • Introduce and use nodetool
  • Populate and test nodes using cassandra-stress
  • Identify additional Cassandra tools

Understanding Cassandra’s internal architecture

  • Understand how requests are coordinated
  • Understand replication
  • Understand and tune consistency
  • Understand how nodes communicate
  • Understand the system keyspace

Working with the Cassandra write path

  • Understand how data is written to the storage engine
  • Understand the data directories

Working with the Cassandra read path

  • Understand how data is read from the storage engine
  • Introduce anti-entropy operations
  • Read data from Cassandra

Understanding Compaction

  • Understand Cassandra Compaction and its necessity
  • Choose and implement compaction strategies

Introducing hardware planning and troubleshooting

  • Introduce best practices in hardware implementation
  • Introduce troubleshooting resources