Operating system configurations play a significant role in enhancing Cassandra performance. On a dedicated Cassandra server, resources must be tweaked to utilize the full potential of the machine.

Cassandra runs on a JVM, so it can be run on any system that has a JVM. It is recommended to use a Linux variant (CentOS, Ubuntu, Fedora, RHEL, and so on) for Cassandra's production deployment. There are many reasons to it. Configuring system-level settings is easier. Most of the production servers rely on Linux-like systems for deployment. As of April 2013, 65 percent of servers use it. The best toolings are available on Linux: SSH and pSSH commands such as top, free, df, and ps to measure system performance and excellent filesystems such as ext4 and XFS. There are built-in mechanisms to watch the rolling log using tail, and there are excellent editors such as Vim and Emacs, and they're all free!