> How did this this bloom filter get too big? Bloom filters grow with the amount of row keys you have. It is natural that they grow bigger over time. The question is whether there is something "wrong" with this node (for example, lots of sstables and disk space used due to compaction not running, etc) or whether your cluster is simply increasing it's use of row keys over time. You'd want graphs to be able to see the trends. If you don't, I'd start by comparing this node with other nodes in the cluster and figure out whether there is a very significant difference or not.
In any case, a bigger heap will allow you to start up again. But you should definitely make sure you know what's going on (natural growth of data vs. some problem) if you want to avoid problems in the future. If it is legitimate use of memory, you *may*, depending on your workload, want to adjust target bloom filter false positive rates: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-3497 -- / Peter Schuller (@scode, http://worldmodscode.wordpress.com)
