I hope I understand nodetool cleanup correctly - it should clean up all data that does not (currently) belong to this node. If so, I think it might not be working correctly.
Look at nodes 192.168.252.124 and 192.168.252.99 below 192.168.252.99Up 279.35 MB 3544607988759775661076818827414252202 |<--| 192.168.252.124Up 167.23 MB 56713727820156410577229101238628035242 | ^ 192.168.252.125Up 82.91 MB 85070591730234615865843651857942052863 v | 192.168.254.57Up 366.6 MB 113427455640312821154458202477256070485 | ^ 192.168.254.58Up 88.44 MB 141784319550391026443072753096570088106 v | 192.168.254.59Up 88.45 MB 170141183460469231731687303715884105727 |-->| I wanted 124 to take all the load from 99. So I issued a move command. $ nodetool -h cass99 -p 9004 move 56713727820156410577229101238628035243 This command tells 99 to take the space b/w (56713727820156410577229101238628035242, 56713727820156410577229101238628035243] which is basically just one item in the token space, almost nothing... I wanted it to be very slim (just playing around). So, next I get this: 192.168.252.124Up 803.33 MB 56713727820156410577229101238628035242 |<--| 192.168.252.99Up 352.85 MB 56713727820156410577229101238628035243 | ^ 192.168.252.125Up 134.24 MB 85070591730234615865843651857942052863 v | 192.168.254.57Up 676.41 MB 113427455640312821154458202477256070485 | ^ 192.168.254.58Up 99.74 MB 141784319550391026443072753096570088106 v | 192.168.254.59Up 99.94 MB 170141183460469231731687303715884105727 |-->| The tokens are correct, but it seems that 99 still has a lot of data. Why? OK, that might be b/c it didn't delete its moved data. So next I issued a nodetool cleanup, which should have taken care of that. Only that it didn't, the node 99 still has 352 MB of data. Why? So, you know what, I waited for 1h. Still no good, data wasn't cleaned up. I restarted the server. Still, data wasn't cleaned up... I issued a cleanup again... still no good... what's up with this node?