Cassandra as distributed cached data store

Question

Can we use Cassandra as a distributed in-memory cache database by utilizing its file level caching, key cache, and row cache?

I don't want to overload each node and I want to add more nodes to the cluster when the data grows to make this effective (to let most of my data be cached). Especially since 40% of my column families are static, and updates/insertions to other tables are not much.

The primary aim of ours is that we need an elastic realtime data store (faster around as in memory dB)

Answer 1

Cassandra was not born for the goal but after many optimizations it has become also a tool for in-memory caching. There are a few experiments -- the most significant I know is the one reported by Netflix. In Netflix they replaced their EVCache system (whom was persisted by a Cassandra backend) with a new SSD cassandra-based cache architecture -- the results are very impressive in term of performance improvements and cost-reduction.

Before choosing Cassandra as a replacement for any cache system I'd recommend to deeply understand the usage of row-caching and key-caching. More, I've never used Datastax Enterprise but it has an interesting in memory table feature.

HTH, Carlo

Answer 2

I guess you could but I don't think that's correct use-case for Cassandra. Without knowing more about your requirements, I'd recommend you have a look at products like e.g. Hazelcast which is an in-memory distributed cache and sounds more like a fit for your use-case.