How To Install Apache Cassandra on Debian 11

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Apache Cassandra on Debian 11. For those of you who didn’t know, Apache Cassandra is a NoSQL database used for storing large amounts of data. It has a distributed architecture and is designed to manage large volumes of data with dynamic replication. It is used by many large companies like Github, NetFlix, Reddit, and Instagram.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the Cassandra open source NoSQL database on a Debian 11 (Bullseye).

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Debian 11 (Bullseye).
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install Apache Cassandra on Debian 11 Bullseye

Step 1. Before we install any software, it’s important to make sure your system is up to date by running the following apt commands in the terminal:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install apt-transport-https

Step 2. Installing Java.

Apache Cassandra requires the latest version of Java. Run the following command below to install Java on your Debian system:

sudo apt install openjdk-11-jre

Verify the Java installation:

java -version

Step 3. Installing Apache Cassandra on Debian 11.

By default, Cassandra is not available on Debian’s base repository. Now we add the Apache Cassandra repository to your system:

echo "deb https://downloads.apache.org/cassandra/debian 40x main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/cassandra.sources.list

Next, import the public key of the Cassandra repository:

curl https://downloads.apache.org/cassandra/KEYS | sudo apt-key add -

After that, update the packages’ index and install the Apache Cassandra packages:

sudo apt updatesudo apt install cassandra

Once the installation of Apache Cassandra is done, its service starts automatically. To verify it, use the command below:

sudo systemctl status cassandra

Also, you can verify the status using the below command:

sudo nodetool status

Output:

Datacenter: datacenter1
=======================
Status=Up/Down
|/ State=Normal/Leaving/Joining/Moving
--  Address    Load       Tokens  Owns (effective)  Host ID                               Rack
UN  127.0.0.1  55.05 KiB  24      100.0%            fb0e8bf7-mei-41a6-godet-e8f230f1b797  rack8

To login to Apache Cassandra, you can use the cqlsh a command-line tool as follows:

cqlsh

Output:

Connected to Test Cluster at 127.0.0.1:9042
[cqlsh 6.0.0 | Cassandra 4.0.0 | CQL spec 3.6.8 | Native protocol v5]
Use HELP for help.
cqlsh>

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Cassandra. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the latest version of Apache Cassandra on Debian 11 Bullseye. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official Cassandra website.