Monitoring Cassandra
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[Cassandra Configuration and Operation](https://github.com/dell-oss/Doradus/wiki/Cassandra Configuration and Operation): Monitoring Cassandra
Cassandra supports the JMX protocol to provide monitoring capabilities. In addition to the normal Java parameters that can be monitored via JMX (memory usage, CPU usage, classes loaded, etc.), Cassandra implements numerous additional MBeans ("management beans"), which provide insights into core Cassandra operations and status. A detailed description of the Cassandra-specific MBeans can be found here:
http://wiki.apache.org/cassandra/JmxInterface
Generic JMX tools can be used to monitor Cassandra, including the JConsole tool that is bundled with the Java JDK. To use JConsole, install the Java SE 6 JDK and run jconsole.exe from the bin directory. JConsole will automatically find all Java processes on the current machine and offer to connect to them. If the Cassandra process you want to monitor is executing on a remote machine, select the Remote Process button and enter the host name or IP address and JMX port number of the remote Cassandra process you want to connect to. Example:
Figure 9 - JConsole New Connection Dialog
If the remote JMX process is secured with authentication, enter the Username and Password with which JMX has been configured. When JConsole connects, it offers several panes for examining generic Java metrics as well as the Cassandra-specific MBeans. Below is an example of the Overview pane for a Cassandra process:
Figure 10 - JConsole Overview Pane
Although JConsole can access Cassandra-specific MBeans, it provides generic UI widgets for accessing these functions. Furthermore, although JConsole can connect to multiple JMX-enabled processes at once, it does not provide integrated, cross-process metrics.
To get more detailed information about Cassandra information from a cluster perspective, there are a number of third party tools becoming available. See, for example, OpsCenter, which is available from Datastax: