Cassandra Clients Test

Cassandra clients can communicate with the server through two protocols: the CQL binary protocol or through an RPC protocol called thrift. The CQL binary protocol is a newer protocol and is preferred over thrift. Cassandra Query Language (CQL) is a language, similar to SQL, that is used by Cassandra to create commands to manipulate its schema structure and data (DDL and DML). While monitoring the Cassandra database node, administrators may often want to analyze which communication protocol is effectively used by the Cassandra clients to access the server. For this purpose, eG Enterprise offers the Cassandra Clients test.

This test reports the number of clients accessing the target database server through the native protocol and the thrift protocol. By comparing the count of these measures, administrators can figure out the protocol that is used frequently by the clients to communicate with the server.

Target of the test : A Cassandra Database

Agent deploying the test : An external/remote agent.

Outputs of the test : One set of results for the target Cassandra Database node being monitored.

Configurable parameters for the test

Parameters	Description
Test Period	How often should the test be executed.
Host	The host for which the test is to be configured.
Port	The port on which the specified host listens. By default, this is 9042.
JMX Remote Port	Here, specify the port at which the JMX listens for requests from remote hosts. Ensure that you specify the same port that you configured in the cassandra-env.sh file (if the target Cassandra Database node is installed on a Unix host) or the cassandra-env.ps1 file (if the target Cassandra Database node is installed on a Windows host) in the <CASSANDRA_HOME> directory used by the target Cassandra Database node. To know how to specify the remote port, refer to Enabling JMX Support for JRE.
JMX User and JMX Password	If JMX requires authentication only (but no security), then ensure that the user and password parameters are configured with the credentials of a user with read-write access to JMX. To know how to create this user, refer to Configuring the eG Agent to Support JMX Authentication.
Confirm Password	Confirm the Password by retyping it in this text box.

Measurements made by the test

Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
Connected native clients	Indicates the number of clients connected to the database node through the native protocol.	Number	Compare the value of this measure with the Connected thrift clients measure to figure out if the clients preferred native protocol over thrift protocol.
Connected thrift clients	Indicates the number of clients connected to the database node through the thrift protocol.	Number	Compare the value of this measure with the Connected native clients measure to figure out if the clients preferred thrift protocol over native protocol.