Cassandra Backend

To use Apache Cassandra as the persistent storage for Reaper, the storageType setting must be set to cassandra in the Reaper configuration YAML file. In addition, the connection details for the Apache Cassandra cluster being used to store Reaper data must be specified in the configuration YAML file. An example of how to configure Cassandra as persistent storage for Reaper can be found in the cassandra-reaper-cassandra.yaml.

storageType: cassandra
cassandra:
  clusterName: "test"
  contactPoints: ["127.0.0.1"]
  keyspace: reaper_db
  queryOptions:
    consistencyLevel: LOCAL_QUORUM
    serialConsistencyLevel: SERIAL

If you’re using authentication or SSL:

storageType: cassandra
cassandra:
  clusterName: "test"
  contactPoints: ["127.0.0.1"]
  keyspace: reaper_db
  authProvider:
    type: plainText
    username: cassandra
    password: cassandra
  ssl:
    type: jdk

The Apache Cassandra backend is the only deployment that allows multiple Reaper instances to operate concurrently. This provides high availability and allows to repair multi DC clusters.

To run Reaper using the Cassandra backend, create a reaper_db keyspace with an appropriate placement strategy. This is installation specific, and names of the data centers in the cluster that will host the Reaper data must be specified. For example:

CREATE KEYSPACE reaper_db WITH replication = {'class': 'NetworkTopologyStrategy', '<data_center>': 3};

Where:

  • <data_center> is the name of the Cassandra data center that will contain the keyspace replicas.

When operating Reaper in a production environment, it is recommended that:

  • An RF (Replication Factor) of 3 be used in each data center for the reaper_db keyspace. This is to ensure that all Reaper state data is still available should a node in the cluster be unavailable.
  • The NetworkTopologyStrategy should be used for the replication strategy of the keyspace. This is because LOCAL_* requests will fail if the SimpleNetworkingStrategy is used in an environment where there is more than one data center defined.

Schema initialization and migration will be done automatically upon startup.