On Fri, Jul 4, 2014 at 2:10 PM, DuyHai Doan <doanduy...@gmail.com> wrote:
> c. operational simplicity due to master-less architecture. This feature
> is, although quite transparent for developers, is a key selling point.
> Having suffered when installing manually a Hadoop cluster, I happen to love
> the deployment simplicity of C*, only one process per node, no moving parts.
>
Asserting that Cassandra, as a fully functioning production system, is
currently easier to operate than RDBMS is just false. It is still false
even if we ignore the availability of experienced RDBMS operators and
decades of RDBMS operational best practice.
The quality of software engineering practice in RDBMS land also most
assuredly results in a more easily operable system in many, many use cases.
Yes, Cassandra is more tolerant to individual node failures. This turns out
to not matter as much in terms of "operability" as non-operators appear to
think it does. Very trivial operational activities ("create a new
columnfamily" or "replace a failed node") are subject to failure mode edge
cases which often are not resolvable without brute force methods.
I am unable to get my head around the oft-heard marketing assertion that a
data-store in which such common activities are not bulletproof is capable
of being than better to operate than the RDBMS status quo. The production
operators I know also do not agree that Cassandra is simple to operate.
All the above aside, I continue to maintain that Cassandra is the best at
being the type of thing that it is. If you have a need to horizontally
scale a use case that is well suited for its strength and poorly suited for
RDBMS, you should use it. Far fewer people actually have this sort of case
than think they do.
=Rob
