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From: Jonathan Ellis <jbellis@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2011 09:01:09 -0800
Message-ID: <AANLkTik5fKwVU1cNhk3gFn6v9vQ5y7FDVoNTnwBcWcsm@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: cassandra as session store
To: user@cassandra.apache.org
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Sounds like you're seeing the bug in 0.7.0 preventing deletion of
non-Data.db files (i.e. your Index.db) post-compaction.  This is fixed
for 0.7.1.  (https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-2059)

On Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 8:15 AM, Omer van der Horst Jansen
<omerhj@gmail.com> wrote:
> We're using Cassandra as the back end for a home grown session
> management system. That system was originally built back in 2005 using
> BerkelyDB/Java and a data distribution system that used UDP multicast.
> Maintenance was becoming increasingly painful.
>
> I wrote a prototype replacement service using Cassandra 0.6 but
> decided to wait for the availability of official TTL support in 0.7
> before switching over.
>
> The new system has been running in production now for a little over a
> week. My main issue is that Cassandra is using far more disk space
> than I expected it to. The vast bulk of disk space seems to be used
> for *Index.db files. I'm hoping that the 10-day GCGraceSeconds
> interval that kicks in on Friday will help me there.
>
> Most of our apps that use this service generate their own session
> keys. I assume by hashing and salting a user ID and/or calling
> something like java.util.UUID.randomUUID().
>
> My schema is currently very simple -- there's a single CF containing a
> (binary) payload column and a column that indicates whether or not the
> data has been compressed. We have a few rogue apps that store
> humongous XML documents in the session and compression helps to deal
> with that. That's also why memcached wasn't going to work in our
> scenario.
>
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 12:18 PM, Kallin Nagelberg
> <kallin.nagelberg@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hey,
>> I am currently investigating Cassandra for storing what are
>> effectively web sessions. Our production environment has about 10 high
>> end servers behind a load balancer, and we'd like to add distributed
>> session support. My main concerns are performance, consistency, and
>> the ability to create unique session keys. The last thing we would
>> want is users picking up each others sessions. After spending a few
>> days investigating Cassandra I'm thinking of creating a single
>> keyspace with a single super-column-family. The scf would store a few
>> standard columns, and a supercolumn of arbitrary session attributes,
>> like:
>>
>> 0s809sdf8s908sf90s: {
>> prop1: x,
>> created : timestamp,
>> lastAccessed: timestamp,
>> prop2: y,
>> arbirtraryProperties : {
>> =A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0 someRandomProperty1:xxyyzz,
>> =A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0 someRandomProperty2:xxyyzz,
>> =A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0 someRandomProperty3:xxyyzz
>> }
>>
>> Does this sound like a reasonable use case? We are on a tight timeline
>> and I'm currently on the fence about getting something up and running
>> like this on a tight timeline.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> -Kal
>>
>


--=20
Jonathan Ellis
Project Chair, Apache Cassandra
co-founder of DataStax, the source for professional Cassandra support
http://www.datastax.com