Getting started with a test instance of the DC/OS Apache Cassandra service is straightforward.

Prerequisites

Depending on your security mode in Enterprise DC/OS, you may need to provision a service account before installing. You will be able to create the service account only if you have a superuser permission.
- strict security mode requires a service account.
- permissive security mode a service account is optional.
- disabled security mode does not require a service account.
Your cluster must have at least three private nodes.

NOTE: The default DC/OS Apache Cassandra installation provides reasonable defaults for trying out the service, but may not be sufficient for production use. You may require different configurations depending on the context of the deployment.

Installation from the DC/OS CLI

To start a basic test cluster, run the following command on the DC/OS CLI. Enterprise DC/OS users must follow additional instructions. More information about installing DC/OS Apache Cassandra on Enterprise DC/OS is available in the Authenticating DC/OS Services documentation.

dcos package install cassandra

You can specify a custom configuration in an options.json file and pass it to dcos package install using the --options parameter.

dcos package install cassandra --options=<options>.json

It is recommended that this custom configuration is stored in source control.

For more information about building the options.json file, see the DC/OS documentation for service configuration access.

Installation from the DC/OS UI

You can install DC/OS Apache Cassandra from the DC/OS UI. If you install DC/OS Apache Cassandra from the web interface, you must install the DC/OS Apache Cassandra CLI subcommands separately. From the DC/OS CLI, enter the following command:

dcos package install cassandra --cli

Choose ADVANCED INSTALLATION to perform a custom installation.

Integration with DC/OS access controls

In Enterprise DC/OS 1.10 and later, you can integrate your SDK-based service with DC/OS ACLs to restrict users and groups only to certain services. You will install your service into a folder, and then restrict access to some number of folders. Folders also allow you to assign namespaces to services; for example, staging/cassandra and production/cassandra.

Use the following steps to integrate with DC/OS access controls:

In the DC/OS UI, you must create a group and then add a user to the group or create an user. Click Organization > Groups > + or Organization > Users > +. If you create a group, you must also create a user and add them to the group.
Give the user permissions for the folder where you will install your service. In this example, we are creating a user called developer, who will have access to the /testing folder. Select the group or user you created. Select ADD PERMISSION and then toggle to INSERT PERMISSION STRING. Add each of the following permissions to your user or group and then click ADD PERMISSIONS.
```
dcos:adminrouter:service:marathon full
dcos:service:marathon:marathon:services:/testing full
dcos:adminrouter:ops:mesos full
dcos:adminrouter:ops:slave full
```
Install your service into a folder called test. Go to Catalog, then search for cassandra.
Click CONFIGURE and change the service name to /testing/cassandra, then deploy.

The slashes in your service name are interpreted as folders. You are deploying Cassandra in the /testing folder. Any user with access to the /testing folder will have access to the service.

NOTE: Services cannot be renamed because the location of the service is specified in the name and you cannot move services between folders. DC/OS 1.9 does not accept slashes in service names. You may be able to create the service, but you will encounter unexpected problems.

Interacting with your foldered service

Interact with your foldered service via the DC/OS CLI with this flag: --name=/path/to/myservice.
To interact with your foldered service over the web directly, use http://<dcos-url>/service/path/to/myservice. E.g., http://<dcos-url>/service/testing/cassandra/v1/endpoints.

Multi-datacenter Deployment

To replicate data across data centers, Apache Cassandra requires that you configure each cluster with the addresses of the seed nodes from every remote cluster. Use the following steps to learn how to start a multi-data center Apache Cassandra deployment running inside of a single DC/OS cluster.

Launch two Cassandra clusters

Launch the first cluster with the default configuration using the following command:

dcos package install cassandra

Create an options.json file for the second cluster that specifies a different service name and data center name.

{
  "service": {
    "name": "cassandra2",
    "data_center": "dc2"
  }
}

Launch the second cluster with these custom options.

dcos package install cassandra --options=<options>.json

Get the seed node IP addresses

NOTE: If your Cassandra clusters are not on the same network, you must set up a proxying layer to route traffic.

Get the list of seed node addresses for the first cluster using the following command:

dcos cassandra endpoints native-client

Alternatively, you can get this information from the scheduler HTTP API.

DCOS_AUTH_TOKEN=$(dcos config show core.dcos_acs_token)
DCOS_URL=$(dcos config show core.dcos_url)
curl -H "authorization:token=$DCOS_AUTH_TOKEN" $DCOS_URL/service/cassandra/v1/endpoints/native-client

The output is as follows:

{
  "address": [
    "10.0.3.88:9042",
    "10.0.0.162:9042",
    "10.0.0.189:9042"
  ],
  "dns": [
    "node-0-server.cassandra.autoip.dcos.thisdcos.directory:9042",
    "node-1-server.cassandra.autoip.dcos.thisdcos.directory:9042",
    "node-2-server.cassandra.autoip.dcos.thisdcos.directory:9042"
  ]
}

Note the IP addresses in the address field.

Run the same command for your second Cassandra cluster and note the IP addresses in the address field:

dcos cassandra endpoints native-client --name=cassandra2

Update configuration for both clusters

Create an options.json file with the IP addresses of the first cluster (cassandra).

{
  "service": {
    "remote_seeds": "10.0.3.88:9042,10.0.0.162:9042,10.0.0.189:9042"
  }
}
{
  {}
}

Update the configuration of the second cluster.

dcos cassandra update start --options=options.json --name=cassandra2

Perform the same operation on the first cluster, adding the IP addresses of the second cluster’s seed nodes to the service.remote_seeds field. Then, update the first cluster’s configuration: dcos cassandra update start --options=options.json.

Both schedulers will restart after the configuration update, and each cluster will communicate with the seed nodes from the other cluster to establish a multi-data center topology. Repeat this process for each new cluster you add.

You can monitor the progress of the update.

dcos cassandra --name=cassandra update status