How to Install the Cassandra Storage Engine on CentOS 6

MariaDB is a drop-in replacement for MySQL. It is easy to install, offers many speed and performance improvements, and is easy to integrate into most MySQL deployments. Answers for compatibility questions can be found at: MariaDB versus MySQL – Compatibility. MariaDB offers more storage engines than MySQL, including Cassandra (NoSQL), XtraDB (drop-in replacement for InnoDB), and OQGRAPH.

• These instructions are intended for installing the Cassandra Storage Engine for MariaDB 10.0 on CentOS 6.
• I’ll be working from a Liquid Web Core Managed CentOS 6.5 server, and I’ll be logged in as root.
• Your server should already have MariaDB 10.0 installed. If you’re working from MySQL 5.1 or MariaDB 5.5, visit our tutorial on: How to Upgrade MySQL 5.1 to MariaDB 10.0 on CentOS 6

First, you’ll follow a simple best practice: ensuring the list of available packages is up to date before installing anything new:

yum -y update

Now find which repo you should use with the MariaDB repository generator. We’re going to add the CentOS 6 (64 bit) MariaDB 10.0 repository.

For a refresher on editing files with vim see: New User Tutorial: Overview of the Vim Text Editor

vim /etc/yum.repos.d/MariaDB10.repo

# MariaDB 10.0 CentOS repository list – created 2014-10-10 17:33 UTC
# http://mariadb.org/mariadb/repositories/
[mariadb] name = MariaDB
baseurl = http://yum.mariadb.org/10.0/centos6-amd64
gpgkey=https://yum.mariadb.org/RPM-GPG-KEY-MariaDB
gpgcheck=1

Then exit and save the file with the command :wq .

yum clean all

At this point, installing the Cassandra Storage Engine is as simple as running just one command:

yum -y install MariaDB-cassandra-engine

Login to the MySQL server from the command line with the following command:

mysql -u root -p

In this case, I’ve specified the user root with the -u flag and then used the -p flag so MySQL prompts for a password. Enter your current password to complete the login.

From the MySQL command line issue the following command:

SHOW ENGINES;

You should receive a result similar to:

Now, finish installing the storage engine:

INSTALL SONAME 'ha_cassandra';

Which should return:

Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

Now let’s verify that the storage engine is installed. Run the following command and look for CASSANDRA in the Engine column:

SHOW ENGINES;

You should receive a result similar to: