I was hoping to transition my "simple" cassandra cluster (where each node is a cassandra + hadoop tasktracker) to a cluster with two virtual datacenters (vanilla cassandra vs. cassandra + hadoop tasktracker), based on this: http://wiki.apache.org/cassandra/HadoopSupport#ClusterConfig The problem I'm having is my hadoop jobs are getting heavy enough it's affecting my user facing performance on my cluster.
Right now I'm in AWS, and I have 4 nodes in us-east split over two availability zones ("us-east-1c" that I'll call "c" and "us-east-1d" that I'll call "d"), setup with this keyspace: create keyspace civicscience with replication_factor=3 and strategy_options = [{us-east:3}] and placement_strategy='org.apache.cassandra.locator.NetworkTopologyStrategy'; And I'm using the Ec2Snitch. I'm wondering if I write my own snitch that extends Ec2Snitch with overrides as follows: getDC = if(AZ == c || d) return return us-east (to keep current nodes the same) else return us-east-hadoop; getRack = return super(); (returning a,b,c,d seems ok) Then, if I boot N new nodes into us-east-1[a,b] they will be "hadoop" nodes because of the snitch. I'll obviously have to change my home brew cassandra + hadoop instances to selectively run task trackers or not (a/b = yes, and c/d = no). But: -Is the overall RF=3 still ok? -What is the recommended split between "normal" and "hadoop" in terms of strategy_options (assuming RF=3)? 2/1? -Can I (how do I safely) change the keyspace strategy_options from [{us-east:3}] to [{us-east:2, us-east-hadoop:1}] This seems like the riskiest/most complicated step of everything I've proposed... -After I change the options, what (if anything) would I have to do to migrate data around? One final question: should I add new nodes as Brisk instances instead of my home brew cassandra + hadoop nodes? I've obviously already put in the pain/effort of learning how to run hadoop + cassandra... Thanks for any help/advice! will