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Apache Cassandra

Operating Cassandra

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This section is for the people who deploy, configure, secure, monitor, and maintain Apache Cassandra clusters in production. Whether you are standing up your first cluster or upgrading a fleet to Cassandra 6, start here.

Find Your Phase

Use this guide to jump directly to the work that matches where you are in the cluster lifecycle.

Day 0 — Plan and provision

Choose Your Deployment Model | Production Recommendations | Cost and Right-Sizing

Day 1 — Install and configure

Install | Configure | Security | Understand TCM

Day 2 — Operate in production

Repair Orchestration | Golden Signals | Backup Strategy | Config as Code | Integrations

Incident response

Collect Artifacts | Diagnose Latency | Diagnose Compaction | AI-Assisted Ops

What’s New for Operators in Cassandra 6

  • Transactional Cluster Metadata (TCM) — Cluster topology and schema changes are now Raft-based and transactional, replacing the gossip-driven model

  • Automated Repair — Cassandra can now schedule and run repairs automatically without external orchestration

  • Guardrails — Configurable guardrails that warn or reject queries and schema changes that violate operational policy

  • Unified Compaction Strategy — A single compaction strategy that adapts to different workloads, replacing the need to choose between STCS/LCS/TWCS

  • Password Validation and Role Name Generation — New security primitives for credential management

  • JDK 21 with Generational ZGC — Recommended runtime for best GC performance

Recommended Reading Path

  1. Quickstart — Get Cassandra running in minutes

  2. Install and Production Recommendations — Prepare for production

  3. Configure — Tune cassandra.yaml, JVM options, and cluster topology

  4. Secure — Authentication, authorization, and TLS

  5. Operate — Compaction, repair, hints, and bulk loading

  6. Observe — Metrics, audit logging, and troubleshooting

  7. Upgrade — Migrate to TCM and Accord

Install

Configure

Operate

Secure

Upgrade

Tune

Backup and Recovery

Observe and Troubleshoot

Additional References

Popular Runbooks