CASSANDRA Study Guide 2026
Everything you need to pass the CASSANDRA exam in one place: the exam format, every topic to study, real practice questions with explanations, flashcards, and full-length practice tests. Free, no sign-up needed.
📋 CASSANDRA Exam Format at a Glance
📚 CASSANDRA Topics to Study (21)
✍️ Sample CASSANDRA Questions & Answers
1. What is the purpose of the 'internode_encryption' setting in cassandra.yaml?
internode_encryption controls whether TLS is used to secure gossip and streaming traffic between nodes in the cluster.
2. Which of the following does Cassandra NOT possess?
Explanation: ACID operations is NOT a property of Cassandra. Cassandra is a NoSQL database that is designed to provide high scalability, high availability, and fault tolerance, particularly for large-scale, distributed data sets.
3. Which of the following factors determines how data are distributed within a cluster?
Explanation: The partitioner is responsible for deciding the distribution of data across the nodes in a Cassandra cluster. When data is inserted into a Cassandra cluster, the partitioner hashes the partition key to determine which node in the cluster should store the data. Different partitioners use different algorithms for hashing the partition key, but they all aim to distribute the data evenly across the nodes in the cluster. The choice of partitioner can have a significant impact on the performance and scalability of a Cassandra cluster, so it's an important consideration when setting up a new cluster.
4. What is the purpose of running 'nodetool upgradesstables' after a Cassandra version upgrade?
upgradesstables rewrites SSTables into the latest SSTable format version, enabling new compression, indexing, and performance features introduced in the upgraded version.
5. What does 'nodetool cleanup' do after adding a new node to a Cassandra cluster?
After a new node joins and data streams to it, nodetool cleanup removes the portions of data on existing nodes that the new node now owns.
6. What does 'speculative execution' do in Cassandra drivers?
Speculative execution fires off the same query to an additional replica after a configurable delay, reducing tail latency by using the faster response.