Installation of Apache Cassandra

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Installation of Apache Cassandra

Apache Cassandra

Installation of Casandra involves two steps – download and install as

Step 1: Download Cassandra

  • Download links for the latest stable release can always be found on the website.
  • Users of Debian or Debian-based derivatives can install the latest stable release in package form.
  • Users of RPM-based distributions can get packages from Datastax.

Step 2: Basic Configuration
The Cassandra configuration files can be found in the conf directory of binary and source distributions. If you have installed Cassandra from a deb or rpm package, the configuration files will be located in /etc/cassandra.

Platform specific installation is discussed as –

Cassandra installation on Windows 7
1. Cassandra is java based application, so first of all you need to install java on your machine. Latest JRE you can download from here: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html

2. Download Cassandra binary files from here: http://cassandra.apache.org/download/

3. Extract Cassandra source files. e.g. to D:\cassandra

4. set environment variables. (Go to  System Properties -> Tab Advanced -> button Environment Variables … and add system variables here)
JAVA_HOME=c:\Program Files\Java\jre6\ (it should be path to jre directory, not to bin directory … value I used can be different on your machine)
CASSANDRA_HOME=d:\cassandra

5. modify config file d:\cassandra\conf\storage-conf.xml A sample changes are as :

<CommitLogDirectory>/var/lib/cassandra/commitlog</CommitLogDirectory>

to

<CommitLogDirectory>d:/cassandra/commitlog</CommitLogDirectory>

also I created directory d:/cassandra/commitlog

Next change was:

/var/lib/cassandra/data

I changed it to

<DataFileDirectory>d:/cassandra/data</DataFileDirectory>

and again I created directory d:/cassandra/data

6. You are ready to start Cassandra. Go to directory d:\cassandra\bin\ and start cassandra.bat

You should see output like this:

D:\cassandra\bin>cassandra.bat
Starting Cassandra Server
Listening for transport dt_socket at address: 8888
INFO 13:47:17,274 DiskAccessMode ‘auto’ determined to be mmap, indexAccessMode
is mmap
INFO 13:47:17,808 Saved Token not found. Using 15738447088364600050102917327157
1041806
INFO 13:47:17,809 Saved ClusterName not found. Using Test Cluster
INFO 13:47:17,815 Creating new commitlog segment d:/cassandra/commitlog\CommitL
og-1280922437815.log
INFO 13:47:17,886 LocationInfo has reached its threshold; switching in a fresh
Memtable at CommitLogContext(file=’d:/cassandra/commitlog\CommitLog-128092243781
5.log’, position=419)
INFO 13:47:17,903 Enqueuing flush of Memtable-LocationInfo@1370440457(169 bytes
, 4 operations)
INFO 13:47:17,905 Writing Memtable-LocationInfo@1370440457(169 bytes, 4 operati
ons)
INFO 13:47:18,082 Completed flushing d:\cassandra\data\system\LocationInfo-1-Da
ta.db
INFO 13:47:18,122 Starting up server gossip
INFO 13:47:18,196 Binding thrift service to localhost/127.0.0.1:9160
INFO 13:47:18,204 Cassandra starting up…


 Installing Apache Cassandra on Ubuntu 12.04

  • Install the new updates using following commands

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sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

  •     open /etc/apt/sources.list using the following command

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sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

  •     and add the following lines to it

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deb http://www.apache.org/dist/cassandra/debian 10x main
deb-src http://www.apache.org/dist/cassandra/debian 10x main

  •     Run update again and you will get the following error. This means you need to add the PUBLIC_KEY. In next step you will understand how to add this PUBLIC_KEY.

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GPG error: http://www.apache.org unstable Release: The following signatures couldn’t be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 4BD736A82B5C1B00

  •     Register and add a PUBLIC_KEY key and update again, note that you may need to change the key accordingly

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gpg –keyserver wwwkeys.pgp.net –recv-keys 4BD736A82B5C1B00
sudo apt-key add ~/.gnupg/pubring.gpg
sudo apt-get update

  •     Install Cassandra using the following command

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sudo apt-get install cassandra

  •     Start Cassandra server using the following command

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sudo cassandra -f

Installation will create following directories. Uses of them are mentioned within the brackets.

/var/lib/cassandra (data directories)
/var/log/cassandra (log directory)
/var/run/cassandra (runtime files)
/usr/share/cassandra (environment settings)
/usr/share/cassandra/lib (JAR files)
/usr/bin (binary files)
/usr/sbin
/etc/cassandra (configuration files)
/etc/init.d (service startup script)
/etc/security/limits.d (cassandra user limits)
/etc/default

Installing JNA (Java Native Access) on Linux platforms can improve Cassandra memory usage. Install JNA, and add it to /usr/share/cassandra/lib directory.

Here the packaged installation of Apache Cassandra has been done.

Installing the Cassandra Binary Tarball Distribution

DataStax provides binary tarball distributions of Cassandra for installing on platforms that do not have package support, such as Mac, or if you do not have or want to do a root installation. For a complete list of supported platforms, see DataStax Community – Supported Platforms.

Prerequisites

Before installing Cassandra make sure the following prerequisites are met:

  • Oracle Java SE Runtime Environment (JRE) 6. Java 7 is not recommended.
  • Java Native Access (JNA) is required for production installations.

Steps to Install Cassandra

  • Check which version of Java is installed by running the following command in a terminal window:

java -version

DataStax recommends using the most recently released version of Oracle Java SE Runtime Environment (JRE) 6 on all DSE nodes. Versions earlier than 1.6.0_19 should not be used. Java 7 is not recommended. If you need help installing Java, see Installing Oracle JRE.

  • Download the Cassandra DataStax Community tarball:

$ curl -OL http://downloads.datastax.com/community/dsc-cassandra-1.0.9-bin.tar.gz

  • Unpack the distribution:

$ tar -xvzf dsc-cassandra-1.0.9-bin.tar.gz
$ rm *.tar.gz

  • By default, Cassandra installs files into the /var/lib/cassandra and /var/log/cassandra directories.

If you do not have root access to the default directories, ensure you have write access as follows:

$ sudo mkdir /var/lib/cassandra
$ sudo mkdir /var/log/cassandra
$ sudo chown -R $USER:$GROUP /var/lib/cassandra
$ sudo chown -R $USER:$GROUP /var/log/cassandra

Next Steps

  • Initializing a Multiple Node Cluster in a Single Data Center
  • Initializing Multiple Data Center Clusters on Cassandra
  • Install Locations

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