Cassandra Training

What’s New in 2025

Key Updates and Changes

Cassandra 5.0: Enhanced CPU utilization with improved compaction and streaming
Graviton4 Processors: 40% better performance for database workloads
ZGC Integration: Low-latency garbage collection for improved response times
Instance Types: New I8g, R8g, C8g families optimized for Cassandra workloads
Compaction Improvements: Better concurrent compactor defaults and tuning

Major Performance Enhancements

Unified Compaction: Reduced CPU overhead in Cassandra 5.0
Vector Search: CPU-intensive operations requiring additional cores
Streaming Performance: Improved parallel processing for data migration
Memory Management: Better allocation strategies reducing CPU pressure
ARM Optimization: Native ARM64 support for Graviton processors

Cassandra 5.0 CPU Requirements in AWS Cloud

Cassandra 5.0 is highly concurrent and can utilize as many CPU cores as available when configured correctly. Understanding CPU requirements is crucial for optimal performance on AWS EC2 instances.

Cassandra 5.0 AWS Storage Requirements: GP3, I4g Instances, and Performance Optimization

What’s New in 2025

Key Updates and Changes

EBS GP3 Volumes: 20% cost savings over GP2 with independent IOPS/throughput scaling
I4g Instances: Graviton2-powered with 30TB NVMe, 15% better compute performance
I4i vs I4g: 45-60% lower cost per TB with Im4gn/Is4gen families
Unified Compaction: Cassandra 5.0 reduces storage overhead and improves I/O patterns
EBS Optimization: Enhanced throughput up to 80 Gbps on latest instance types

Storage Performance Improvements

GP3 Baseline: 3,000 IOPS and 125 MiB/s regardless of volume size
GP3 Maximum: Up to 16,000 IOPS and 1,000 MiB/s (4x faster than GP2 max)
NVMe Performance: I4g delivers up to 7.6 million IOPS per instance
EBS Elastic Volumes: Live migration between volume types without downtime
Storage Classes: New archive and deep archive tiers for long-term retention

Cassandra 5.0 AWS Storage Requirements

Cassandra 5.0 performs extensive sequential disk I/O for commit logs and SSTable writes, while requiring random I/O for read operations. The enhanced Unified Compaction strategy in Cassandra 5.0 provides more predictable I/O patterns and reduced storage overhead.

Cassandra 5.0 Cluster Tutorial 2025: Ansible Automation for DevOps Tasks

What’s New in 2025

Key Updates and Changes

Cassandra 5.0: Storage Attached Indexes (SAI), Vector Search, Unified Compaction
Ansible 2.19: Event-driven automation, enhanced cloud integrations
VirtualBox Compatibility: Use 6.1.x with Vagrant 2.4.1 for stability
Security First: Ansible Vault and external secret managers now standard
Infrastructure as Code: Git-based workflows with Ansible Collections

Deprecated Features

Cassandra 3.x is end-of-life
Legacy Ansible inventory formats
Manual SSH key management (use automation)
Static inventories for cloud environments

Cassandra Tutorial: Setting up Ansible for our Cassandra Database Cluster for DevOps/DBA tasks

Ansible is a key DevOps/DBA tool for managing backups and rolling upgrades to the Cassandra cluster in AWS/EC2. Ansible uses ssh, so you do not have to install an agent to use it. In 2025, Ansible remains the preferred automation tool with improved event-driven capabilities.

Cloud DevOps 2025: Packer, Ansible, SSH and AWS/EC2

What’s New in 2025

Key Updates and Changes

New EC2 Instance Types: M7i, C7i, and R7i families now available with up to 15% better price-performance
Packer Updates: Version 1.11 with predictable plugin loading and HCP integration
Ansible Best Practices: Enhanced aws_ec2 plugin with improved security and performance features
EBS Volume Evolution: GP3 volumes now standard, offering 20% cost savings over GP2
HashiCorp Updates: Terraform AWS Provider 6.0 with multi-region support
Security Enhancements: AWS Verified Access for SSH/RDP, enhanced IAM with ECR Policy v2

Deprecated Features and Migration Notes

GP2 to GP3 Migration: GP2 volumes should be migrated to GP3 for cost savings
EC2 Dynamic Inventory: Old ec2.py script deprecated in favor of aws_ec2 plugin
Instance Types: Consider upgrading from M6i to M7i instances for better performance
Packer AWS Builder: Continue using amazon-ebs builder with updated authentication methods

Cloud DevOps: Using Packer, Ansible/SSH and AWS command line tools to create and DBA manage EC2 Cassandra instances in AWS.

This article is useful for developers and DevOps/DBA staff who want to create AWS AMI images and manage those EC2 instances with Ansible. Although this article is part of a series about setting up the Cassandra Database images and doing DevOps/DBA with Cassandra clusters, the topics we cover apply to AWS DevOps in general - even if you don’t use Cassandra at all.

AWS Cassandra: Cassandra, NUMA and EC2

March 14, 2017

AWS Cassandra and NUMA

The i3.8xlarge, c4.8xlarge, m4.10xlarge, and above EC2 instance types use more than 1 CPU, which means NUMA controls are available.

A good read on this is from Al Tolbert’s blog post.

The quickest way to tell if a machine is NUMA is to run “numactl –hardware”. -Al Tobey blog post on Cassandra tuning

NUMA stands for Non-Uniform Memory Architecture. Modern x86 CPUs contain an integrated memory controller. Multi-socket system, have two memory controllers. Each CPU gets a share of the memory. If one CPU socket needs memory that another CPU socket has, the memory is transferred. Transferring this memory between CPUs is more expensive than if the memory only existed in one CPUs memory. When a JVM thread only uses memory local to one CPU, things go fast, and if not slower (10 CPU cycles vs. 100 or some order of magnitude).

Cassandra AWS CPU Guidelines

March 14, 2017

Cassandra CPU requirements in AWS Cloud

Cassandra is highly concurrent. Cassandra nodes can uses as many CPU cores as available if configured correctly.

What are vCPUs and ECUs?

An Amazon EC2 vCPU is a hyper thread, often referred to as a virtual core. Think of it as a physical thread of execution. It is able to run one thread at a time (which of course could be swapped out).

An Amazon ECU is some made up term that AWS used to use which was the power of the Intel Pentium chip that they used on the earliest incarnations of EC2. 50 ECU would be like 50 Pentium chips from a bygone era. Ignore ECUs.

Cassandra AWS Storage Requirements

March 14, 2017

Cassandra AWS Storage Requirements

Cassandra does a lot sequential disk IO for the commit log and writing out SSTable. You still need random I/O for read operations. The more read operations that are cache misses, the more your EBS volumes need IOPS.

Cassandra writes to four areas

commit logs
SSTable
an index file
a bloom filter

Consider EC2 instance store instead of EBS for Cassandra

AWS provides EC2 instance local storage called instance storage which is not available with all EC2 instance types, and Elastic Block Store (EBS). Instance storage does not have to go over a SAN or Intranet, instead it uses the local hardware bus. Instance storage is right there on the server you are renting. The downside of EC2 instance storage is the expense, and it is not as flexible as EBS. Due to historic problems with EBS, it used to be the only real option for running Cassandra in AWS. EBS has a reputation for degrading performance over time. Some of this has likely been fixed with enhanced EBS, but instance storage is more reliable.

Cloud DevOps: Packer, Ansible, SSH and AWS/EC2

March 3, 2017

Cloud DevOps: Using Packer, Ansible/SSH and AWS command line tools to create and DBA manage EC2 Cassandra instances in AWS.

This article is useful for developers and DevOps/DBA staff who want to create AWS AMI images and manage those EC2 instances with Ansible. Although this article is part of a series about setting up the Cassandra Database images and doing DevOps/DBA with Cassandra clusters, the topics we cover apply to AWS DevOps in general - even if you don’t use Cassandra at all.

Cassandra Cluster Tutorial: Setting up Ansible for our Cassandra Database Cluster to do DevOps tasks