Running Cassandra On Windows

Installing and running cassandra on windows

Running Cassandra
In earlier versions of Cassandra, before you could start the server there was a bit of
fiddling to be done with Ivy and setting environment variables. But the developers have
done a terrific job of making it very easy to start using Cassandra immediately.
Cassandra requires Java Standard Edition JDK 6. Preferably, use
1.6.0_20 or greater. It has been tested on both the Open JDK and Sun’s
JDK. You can check your installed Java version by opening a command
prompt and executing >java -version. If you need a JDK, you can get
one at http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads.
On Windows
Once you have the binary or the source downloaded and compiled, you’re ready to
start the database server.
You also might need to set your JAVA_HOME environment variable. To do this on
Windows 7, click the Start button and then right-click on Computer. Click Advanced
System Settings, and then click the Environment Variables... button. Click New... to
create a new system variable. In the Variable Name field, type JAVA_HOME. In the Variable
Value field, type the path to your JDK installation. This is probably something like C:
\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_20. Remember that if you create a new environment variable,
you’ll need to reopen any currently open terminals in order for the system to
become aware of the new variable. To make sure your environment variable is set
correctly and that Cassandra can subsequently find Java on Windows, execute this
command in a new terminal: >echo %JAVA_HOME%. This prints the value of your
environment variable.
Once you’ve started the server for the first time, Cassandra will add two directories to
your system. The first is C:\var\lib\cassandra, which is where it will store its data in files
called commitlog. The other is C:\var\log\cassandra; logs will be written to a file called
system.log. If you encounter any difficulties, consult the files in these directories to see
what might have happened. If you’ve been trying different versions of the database and
aren’t worried about losing data, you can delete these directories and restart the server
as a last resort.