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Teamwork Cloud uses Apache Cassandra, an open-source NoSQL distributed database. Before installing Teamwork Cloud, please follow the steps below to install Apache Cassandra.

Prerequisites

• OpenJDK Java 11.0 (see system requirements for version information)
• Apache Cassandra RPMs
  • cassandra-4.1.X.noarch.rpm
  • cassandra-tools-4.1.X.noarch.rpm

• tzdata-java package (may not be needed if Java is already installed

  chkconfig package (for service startup on boot)

Installing with script

The script downloads and installs the necessary packages, Cassandra, and the Cassandra tools from the Apache Software Foundation repository, and creates the necessary firewall rules to allow proper operation both for a single node or a cluster installation. The script will also install Java 11 and set it as the default system Java. 

The script can also be used for offline installation, download the prerequisite RPM packages and place them in the same location as the installation script. Manually install Java 11 and set it as the system default Java.

To install Apache Cassandra

1. Install Apache Cassandra by executing the install_cassandra4x_ol_rhel.sh installation script.

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   sudo ./install_cassandra4x_ol_rhel.sh

2. Start Apache Cassandra by executing the following command:

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   sudo systemctl start cassandra

   
   

3. Check if Apache Cassandra is running by executing the following command:

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   nodetool status

   
   

   If Apache Cassandra is running, you should receive the output displayed below. If the service is fully operational, the first 2 characters of the last line are "UN", indicating that the node status is Up, and its state is Normal.

   
   

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   Datacenter: datacenter1 ======================= Status=Up/Down |/ State=Normal/Leaving/Joining/Moving -- Address Load Tokens Owns (effective) Host ID Rack UN 127.0.0.1 128.4 KB 256 100.0% ea3f99eb-c4ad-4d13-95a1-80aec71b750f rack1

   
   

   Note
   Wait for a few minutes until Cassandra starts for the first time before checking if it is running. If Cassandra has not started yet, you will get the error: "No nodes present in the cluster. Has this node finished starting up?" This means that you need to give Cassandra more time to start.

   
   

4. If Apache Cassandra is not running or if you used installation options other than the one described in this chapter, optionally configure Apache Cassandra.

Developing a backup strategy

Before deploying Teamwork Cloud and Apache Cassandra in a production environment, it is imperative to have a fully implemented backup strategy. The Cassandra database stores all project and user data associated with Teamwork Cloud. Review the backup and restore data procedure document. Ensure that you test the entire backup and restore process before your deployment goes live to users.

Configuring Apache Cassandra for Teamwork Cloud

If you used other installation options and not the provided script or if Apache Cassandra does not start, configure it as described below.

To configure Apache Cassandra

1. Edit the cassandra.yaml file by executing the following command:

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   sudo nano /etc/cassandra/default.conf/cassandra.yaml

   
   

2. Find the following parameters related to the Cassandra node IP address and communication settings, and change them as shown below:

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   seeds: "192.168.130.10" listen_address: 192.168.130.10 broadcast_rpc_address: 192.168.130.10 rpc_address: 0.0.0.0

   • seeds - a comma-delimited list containing all of the seeds in the Cassandra cluster. Since our cluster consists of a single node, it contains only one entry - our IP address.
   • listen address - the IP address that Cassandra uses to listen for connections.
   • broadcast_rcp_address - the IP address used to broadcast to other Cassandra nodes in the cluster. This parameter may be commented. In such case, remove "#" and make sure there are no leading spaces.
   • rcp_address - when set to to 0.0.0.0, Cassandra listens to rpc requests on all interfaces.

3. Find the following parameters that control thresholds to ensure that the data being sent is processed properly, and change them as shown below:
   

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   commitlog_segment_size: 192MiB read_request_timeout: 1800000ms range_request_timeout: 1800000ms write_request_timeout: 1800000ms cas_contention_timeout: 1000ms truncate_request_timeout: 1800000ms request_timeout: 1800000ms batch_size_warn_threshold: 3000KiB batch_size_fail_threshold: 5000KiB

   
   

4. To ensure that the default commit log size is 8GB (recommended), uncomment the commitlog_total_space_in_mb parameter as show as below.
   

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   commitlog_total_space: 8192MiB

   
   

   Note
   Ensure that the partition where the commit log is installed has enough space to accommodate a commit log of 8GB.

   
   

5. To point the data to the appropriate locations, find the following parameters and change them as shown below:
   

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   data_file_directories: - /data/data commitlog_directory: /logs/commitlog hints_directory: /data/hints saved_caches_directory: /data/saved_caches

   
   

6. Start Apache Cassandra by executing the following command:

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   sudo systemctl start cassandra

   
   

7. Check if Apache Cassandra is running by executing the following command:

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   nodetool status

   If Apache Cassandra is running, you should receive the output displayed below. If the service is fully operational, the first 2 characters of the last line are "UN", indicating that the node status is Up, and its state is Normal.

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   Datacenter: datacenter1 ======================= Status=Up/Down |/ State=Normal/Leaving/Joining/Moving -- Address Load Tokens Owns (effective) Host ID Rack UN 127.0.0.1 128.4 KB 256 100.0% ea3f99eb-c4ad-4d13-95a1-80aec71b750f rack1

   
   

Configuring Cassandra memory usage

If you did not use the installation script or want to increase the RAM usage by Cassandra, make the following changes. Otherwise, these configuration changes are set automatically by the Cassandra installation script.

• By default, the maximum RAM usage for Cassandra is 8GB. To change the amount of RAM used by Cassandra, uncomment -Xms4G (min) and -Xmx4G (max) in the jvm-server.options file and specify their values.
• In the jvm11-server.options and jvm8-server.options files, comment all lines from"### CMS Settings" to "### G1 Settings".

• In the jvm11-server.options and jvm8-server.options files, uncomment the following lines:

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  #-XX:+UseG1GC #-XX:MaxGCPauseMillis=500

  
  

• In the jvm11-server.options and jvm8-server.options files, uncomment the following lines and set the values to the physical CPU core count (the values of both parameters should be the same):

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  #-XX:ParallelGCThreads=16 #-XX:ConcGCThreads=16

  
  

• In the jvm8-server.options file, comment all lines from "### GC logging options" to the end of the file.

• Synchronize CPU clocks on all Cassandra cluster nodes. Otherwise, you may encounter issues when creating an empty Cassandra cluster.

• When using cqlsh, use Python 3.6.0 or a later version. Python 2.7 series is no longer supported.
• In the logback.xml file, comment the "<appender-ref ref="ASYNCDEBUGLOG" />" line. This will increase Cassandra's performance by disabling the debug log.

Configuring Linux environment for Cassandra performance

To improve Apache Cassandra performance

1. Open the sysctl.conf file by executing the following command:

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   sudo nano /etc/sysctl.conf

   
   

2. To configure the TCP settings, add the following tuning parameters to the file:

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   net.core.rmem_max=16777216 net.core.wmem_max=16777216 net.core.optmem_max=40960 net.core.default_qdisc=fq net.core.somaxconn=4096 net.ipv4.conf.all.arp_notify = 1 net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_time=60 net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_probes=3 net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_intvl=10 net.ipv4.tcp_mtu_probing=1 net.ipv4.tcp_rmem=4096 12582912 16777216 net.ipv4.tcp_wmem=4096 12582912 16777216 net.ipv4.tcp_max_syn_backlog=8096 net.ipv4.tcp_slow_start_after_idle = 0 net.ipv4.tcp_tw_reuse = 1 vm.max_map_count = 1048575 vm.swappiness = 0 vm.dirty_background_ratio=5 vm.dirty_ratio=80 vm.dirty_expire_centisecs = 12000

   
   

3. To apply the setting without rebooting, execute the following command:

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   sudo sysctl -p

   
   

For more information about tuning Linux, see DSE 6.8 Administrator Guide.

Using jemalloc memory allocator

The jemalloc memory allocator package can potentially improve Cassandra performance. Our installation script does not install jemalloc. The easiest way to install this optional package is to first install the epel-release package. You can then pull the latest jemalloc release from the EPEL repository. An older version jemalloc is available for direct download and install.

• EPEL package (optional, for pulling jemalloc package)

• Repository pull (epel-release)
• RHEL 8 direct download

• jemalloc package (optional for performance)

• EPEL Repository pull for latest version (jemalloc)
• Older version (3.6) for direct download