Cassandra easy
Your database needs to handle 10x more traffic. What is the standard 'Cassandra Way' to increase system capacity?
- A Buy a single, more powerful server with 10x more RAM and CPU (Vertical Scaling).
- B Add more commodity servers (Nodes) to the existing cluster (Horizontal Scaling), allowing the system to rebalance data automatically.
- C Reduce the size of the data by deleting all user avatars and images.
- D Split the database into 10 separate, disconnected clusters.
Answer: B. Add more commodity servers (Nodes) to the existing cluster (Horizontal Scaling), allowing the system to rebalance data automatically.
Cassandra is built for 'Linear' horizontal scaling. Unlike SQL databases that eventually hit a wall where even the biggest server is too small, a Cassandra cluster can simply keep growing by adding more nodes. Some companies run Cassandra clusters with over 10,000 nodes.
One system design question a day, with spaced repetition so the ones you miss come back.
Get the appRelated questions
- In a Cassandra Keyspace, what does a 'Replication Factor of 3' specifically guarantee for your data redundancy?
- Unlike a Leader-Follower architecture (like MySQL or Redis), how does Cassandra maintain high availability within its node cluster?
- Cassandra Query Language (CQL) looks similar to SQL. What is a fundamental SQL feature that CQL does NOT support to ensure distributed performance?
- What is the critical architectural function of the 'Partition Key' in a Cassandra table?
- Apache Cassandra is fundamentally designed as which architectural category of NoSQL database?
- An extreme financial trading application requires 'Batch' sync for the Commit Log. What is the fundamental throughput limitation introduced by this setting?