Hi. Supposed I have a 6-node cluster running and I want to build a 3-node cluster based on that 6-node cluster. What is the recommended way to quickly build such cluster? Each node is about 120Gb and we have RF=3. We are on Cassandra 1.2.19 and we are not using vnode.
My initial research shows it can either be done with sstableloader or restore using snapshot and fix the token range. In the case of sstableloader, given it is streaming, and we are restoring from a live server, this seems to be a slow process if we throttle the traffic. Even if I take this route, do I just pick 3 node out of the 6 nodes in any random order? In the case of restoring from snapshots I have restored a 6-node replica with just copying snapshot files (along with schema files), run nodetool refresh, and should be able to complete in a few hours. But now with smaller replica, do I again just pick snapshots from any 3 nodes? What and why do I need to fix token range (from what I read)? Any feedback is appreciated. Thanks. John
