Current versions of Hector will mark the host as temporarily down if a connection times out (retrying N seconds later; defaults to 10). If you only have one host in your list, this will be an issue. It would be a good idea to use more than one VIP for this reason.
Managing configurations on the app server does not have to be difficult. I have used puppet previously to keep an /etc/hector/hector.properties file up to date with my list of servers (using SpringFramework's excellent configuration parameter replacement plumbing to pull this in at startup). You can also add/remove hosts via JMX at this point as well. If there are any Hector-specific things that come up, feel free to send us an email on hector-us...@googlegroups.com. On Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 11:28 AM, Jonathan Colby <jonathan.co...@gmail.com> wrote: > Thanks guys. > On Dec 20, 2010, at 5:44 PM, Dave Viner wrote: > > You can put a Cassandra cluster behind a load balancer. One thing to be > cautious of is the health check. Just because the node is listening on port > 9160 doesn't mean that it's healthy to serve requests. It is required, but > not sufficient. > The real test is the JMX values. > Dave Viner > > On Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 6:25 AM, Jonathan Colby <jonathan.co...@gmail.com> > wrote: >> >> I was unable to find example or documentation on my question. I'd like to >> know what the best way to group a cluster of cassandra nodes behind a >> virtual ip. >> >> For example, can cassandra nodes be placed behind a Citrix Netscaler >> hardware load balancer? >> >> I can't imagine it being a problem, but in doing so would you break any >> cassandra functionality? >> >> The goal is to have the application talk to a single virtual ip and be >> directed to a random node in the cluster. >> >> I heard a little about adding the node addresses to Hector's >> load-balancing mechanism, but this doesn't seem too robust or easy to >> maintain. >> >> Thanks in advance. > >
