Cassandra Training Overview
This Cassandra DevOps training course teaches both technical and non-technical attendees how to manage NoSQL and big data centered around Cassandra. Participants learn how to choose the correct use cases for Cassandra, integrate Java with Cassandra, and much more.
Location and Pricing
Accelebrate offers instructor-led enterprise training for groups of 3 or more online or at your site. Most Accelebrate classes can be flexibly scheduled for your group, including delivery in half-day segments across a week or set of weeks. To receive a customized proposal and price quote for private corporate training on-site or online, please contact us.
In addition, we offer some courses as live, instructor-led online classes for individuals.
Objectives
- Explain how to choose the correct use cases for Cassandra
- Understand the core concepts of the operations side of the Cassandra database
- Work with the critical architecture paths of Cassandra: Bloom filters, Block Indexes, SSTables, etc.
- Work with the 3-node Cassandra cluster in Rackspace
- Write Java code to interact with Cassandra
- Get links to the best books, blog posts, and videos for students to learn more about Hadoop on their own
Prerequisites
No prior knowledge is presumed, although basic experience with relational/SQL databases and Java programming is beneficial.
Outline
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Introduction to Cassandra
- How to pick a NoSQL category
- Brief use case discussion of Key/Value, Key/Document, Column Family, Graph, RealTime
- Structured vs. Unstructured data
- Cassandra Origins: Amazon Dynamo, Google BigTable, and Facebook
- So, what’s Cassandra good for? Use Cases.
- Hardware recommendations (Spinning disks vs. SSD, CPU/RAM/Network requirements, etc.)
- Cassandra versions
- Quick Vendor Discussion (Vanilla Apache, DataStax, Accunu)
- Book, YouTube & Blog recommendations for learning more about Cassandra
Cassandra Architecture Fundamentals and Intro to CQL
- Peer-to-peer design
- Logical Data Model: Keyspace, Column Family/Table, Rows, Columns
- Traditional Ring design vs. VNodes
- Partitioners: Murmer3, Random (md5) and ByteOrdered
- Gossip communications
- Coordinator node
- Seed nodes
- Write/Read consistency levels: Any, One, Two, Three, Quorum
- Snitches: Dynamic snitching, Simple Snitch, Rack Inferring Snitch, Property File Snitch, Gossiping Property File Snitch
- Routing Client requests
- How a table is flushed from Memtable onto disk into SSTable files
- Compactions fundamentals to reduce SSTable data files
- Nodetool commands: gossipinfo, cfstats, describering
- YAML file fundamentals
- OpsCenter GUI
- Stress testing Cassandra
- CQL command fundamentals
Scaling Cassandra, Advanced CQL, and Advanced YAML file
- Best practices for scaling a Cassandra cluster
- Managing a Cassandra cluster across data centers (new write/read consistency levels: Local quorum, each_quorum, all, serial)
- Deeper dive into the YAML file settings
- Advanced CQL concepts
Database Internals
- Deep dive into the Write path
- In-memory structures for each SSTable: partition index, partition summary, bloom filter
- Fsync settings for the commit log
- How inserts, updates, and deletes are treated by Cassandra
- Hinted Handoffs
- Deletes and Tombstone fundamentals
- Advanced Compaction concepts
- Deep dive into the Read path: Row cache, partition key cache, partition summary, bloom filters, etc
- Off-heap components in Cassandra
- Compression concepts
- Lightweight Transactions
- Snapshots
Java API
- Different ways to programmatically query Cassandra: Thrift, Hector, Astyanax, DataStax Devcenter, DataStax Java driver, python with Pycassa, DataStax C# driver, ODBC for Hive, plus others
- Writing your first client application
- Connecting to the Cassandra cluster programmatically
- Using a session to execute CQL commands
- Asynchronous I/O to Cassandra cluster
- Node discovery
- Automatic failover
- Modifying cluster configuration programmatically
Advanced Concepts
- JVM performance tuning fundamentals
- JConsole vs. jmxterm
- Tools to monitor/test Cassandra clusters: disk i/o (hdparm, iostat), memory analysis, visualization with D3.js and OpsCenter
- Logging in Cassandra (log4j)
- Security: SSL encryption for client-to-node and node-to-node
- Security: Authentication and Authorization fundamentals
- Security: Firewall ports
- DataStax Enterprise: Running Hadoop with Cassandra
- DataStax Enterprise: Running Solr with Cassandra
Conclusion
Training Materials
All Cassandra training students receive comprehensive courseware.
Software Requirements
VirtualBox 5.0 or later in a Windows, Linux, or Mac environment with at least 8GB of physical RAM. Accelebrate provides a virtual machine with everything necessary for this class.
