Everything to deploy a multi-node, single-datacenter Cassandra cluster on Ubuntu.

This guide works for Cassandra versions 3.x. Steps for future versions might differ.

• sudo apt-get update
• Install Oracle Java 8 or OpenJDK 8. See this Stackoverflow answer.

• echo "deb http://debian.datastax.com/datastax-ddc 3.2 main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/cassandra.sources.list (replace 3.2 with the version you're installing)
• curl -L https://debian.datastax.com/debian/repo_key | sudo apt-key add -
• sudo apt-get update
• sudo apt-get install datastax-ddc

Pick certain nodes as seed nodes. It is recommended to have more than one seed per cluster for fault tolerance.

• First, stop Cassandra and clear data since the package installation starts it automatically.
  • sudo service cassandra stop
  • sudo rm -rf /var/lib/cassandra/data/system/*
• Edit /etc/cassandra/cassandra.yaml. See cassandra.yaml. For advanced properties, see this.

• First, start all seeds and then the other nodes.
  • sudo service cassandra start
• Check that the service is running.
  • sudo service cassandra status
• Check that all nodes are part of the cluster.
  • sudo nodetool status
• Use the cqlsh utility to operate the cluster.

1. http://docs.datastax.com/en/cassandra/3.x/cassandra/install/installDeb.html
2. http://docs.datastax.com/en/cassandra/3.x/cassandra/initialize/initSingleDS.html
3. http://docs.datastax.com/en/cassandra/2.0/cassandra/security/secureFireWall_r.html

1. Startup failures? Logs are your best friend! /var/log/cassandra/
2. http://docs.datastax.com/en/cassandra/3.x/cassandra/troubleshooting/trblshootTOC_g.html