So, you have played a bit with Cassandra on your local machine and read something about how great it scales. Now it's time to evaluate all the tall claims that Cassandra makes.

This chapter deals with cluster deployment and the decision that you need to make that will affect a number of nodes, types of machines, and tweaks in the Cassandra configuration file. We start with hardware evaluations and then dive into OS-level tweaks, followed by the prerequisite software applications and how to install them. Once the base machine is ready, we will discuss the Cassandra installation—which is fairly easy. The rest of the chapter discusses various settings available, what fits in which situation, the pros and cons, and so on. Having been equipped with all this information, you are ready to launch your first cluster. The chapter provides working code that deploys Cassandra on n number of nodes, sets the entire configuration, and starts Cassandra, effectively launching...