The Best Cassandra Monitoring Tools

Apache Cassandra is a widely used NoSQL database that is known for its scalability, high availability, and fault tolerance. However, with its distributed architecture and complex configuration, monitoring Cassandra can be a challenging task for administrators. That's why many organizations turn to Cassandra monitoring tools to help them monitor their Cassandra clusters and detect issues before they turn into critical problems.

Here is our list of the best Cassandra monitoring tools:

1. AxonOps – FREE VERSION This cloud-native solution can monitor, maintain, and back up any Cassandra cluster while providing the insights you need with its comprehensive dashboards. Access 100% free developer sandbox.
2. ManageEngine Applications Manager – FREE TRIAL This comprehensive tool supports the performance monitoring and administration of all nodes in your Cassandra cluster. It even collects key metrics for thorough insights. Start a 30-day free trial.
3. Datadog Apache Cassandra Monitor This robust monitoring system collects, aggregates, and visualizes the different Cassandra metrics and sends alerts when required.
4. Site24X7 Cassandra Monitoring This plugin tracks important metrics to identify slowdowns and resource limitations, so you can quickly resolve them.
5. Sematext Apache Cassandra Monitoring This advanced tool provides real-time visibility into the metrics, logs, and events of Cassandra.

In this article, we'll explore some of the best Cassandra monitoring tools available today, and highlight their features and benefits to help you make an informed decision about which one is right for your organization.

Let's take a detailed look at each of these tools.

The Best Cassandra Monitoring Tools

1. AxonOps – FREE VERSION

AxonOps is a cloud-native solution that comes with a ton of features to monitor, maintain, and back up any Cassandra cluster. With this tool, you can stay on top of the health and performance of your Cassandra clusters from anywhere.

Key Features

Below are some salient features of AxonOps.

• Intuitive Dashboards One of the highlights of AxonOps is its intuitive dashboard, which provides all the information you want in a single place. With this dashboard, you can get a snapshot of different metrics related to your cache, coordinator, applications, and more. Also, you can drill down on each metric to understand the deviations and the current values when compared with historical ones, as well as other pertinent information that can point you to the root cause of the issue.
• Logs and Events This feature collects logs and other internal Cassandra events, like JMX calls. Eventually, it displays all the collected information in a visually appealing way to help you understand the connections between events. Such correlation can make it easy to detect anomalies and their causes.
• Service Checks The RAG status dashboard regularly checks your nodes and services. In particular, it evaluates your open ports, processes, and service health with minimum setup. All this information can help you detect faulty ports and poorly performing services, so you can address them right away.
• Alert Integrations Another cool feature of AxonOps is that you can set the alert rules and configure their criticality. Also, you can route alerts to Slack, PagerDuty, and even generic webhooks. It's even possible to configure a specific route for each alert.
• Cassandra Repairs Repairs are one of the most difficult operations and one that has a steep learning curve. At the same time, it's essential for maintaining the integrity of your data clusters. AxonOps eases this process with its Adaptive Repair feature, which will constantly monitor the performance of your cluster and regulate the speed of the repair process. When needed, it can even throttle the process during busy times.
• Backup and Restore Another highlight of AxonOps is its backup and restore capabilities. With this tool, you can specify your backup schedules, work with target storage providers, and even manage retention for local and remote storage.

In all, AxonOps is specifically designed for monitoring Cassandra, and its many features ensure that your Cassandra has high uptimes and excellent performance.

Why do we recommend it?

AxonOps is a cloud-native solution that excels in monitoring, maintaining, and backing up Cassandra clusters. Its intuitive dashboards and comprehensive alert integrations make it a standout choice for real-time Cassandra monitoring.

Who is it recommended for?

Best suited for businesses needing a detailed, cloud-native monitoring solution with adaptive repair features and backup capabilities for Cassandra clusters.

You can get access to the free developer version sandbox environment. You will need to register and obtain a customized quote for enterprise scale service.

2. ManageEngine Applications Manager – FREE TRIAL

ManageEngine Applications Manager comes with a feature called Cassandra Cluster Management. With this feature, you can understand the performance of your Casandra clusters and troubleshoot them. At the same time, you can also plan the overall capacity to better manage your data.

Key Features

Read on to know how you can use Applications Manager to monitor your Cassandra clusters.

• Efficient Management of Clusters With Applications Manager, you can continuously monitor the different Cassandra clusters. In particular, the Applications Manager has a user-friendly dashboard that displays the health, availability, and performance status of all the Cassandra clusters. At a glance, you can tell which clusters are having problems and can drill down into their metrics to understand the root cause and troubleshoot them.
• Memory Monitoring Cassandra clusters are known to consume high levels of memory, and this can impact the overall performance of your systems, especially if you're low on RAM. This is why the Applications Manager closely follows the memory consumption patterns of different Cassandra clusters, so you can take the necessary action to free up your memory.
• Checks Performance Applications Manager tracks some key Cassandra metrics, like CPU utilization and the number of processors. This information is combined with the performance of your underlying hardware to provide direction for troubleshooting. Similarly, it monitors disk space usage over defined periods to help identify performance issues and remedy them.
• Dropped Messages Dropped messages are a sure sign of performance degradation, which is why the Applications Manager keeps tabs on them. Specifically, it sends a log summary of dropped messages along with the type of message. You can use this information for capacity planning and configuring alarms.

All the above features come together to provide a comprehensive view of Cassandra's health and performance, so you can take remedial action right away.

Why do we recommend it?

ManageEngine Applications Manager is recommended for its comprehensive monitoring capabilities, offering efficient cluster management and detailed insights into Cassandra's performance. It's particularly useful for its memory monitoring feature, crucial in managing Cassandra's high memory consumption.

ManageEngine Applications Manager offers a comprehensive solution for managing and monitoring Cassandra clusters. It stands out with its efficient cluster management, offering a user-friendly dashboard that displays the health, availability, and performance of all Cassandra clusters.

The tool's memory monitoring feature is crucial for Cassandra's high memory usage, providing valuable insights for optimizing system performance. Additionally, its performance checks, including CPU utilization and disk space usage, help in troubleshooting and ensuring the smooth running of Cassandra environments. The capacity to track dropped messages further aids in capacity planning and alarm configuration.

Who is it recommended for?

Ideal for organizations seeking a tool to continuously monitor multiple Cassandra clusters with a focus on performance, health, and memory utilization.

Register to get a quote. In the meantime, you can also download a 30-day free trial.

ManageEngine Applications Manager Start a 30-day FREE Trial

3. Datadog Apache Cassandra Monitor

Datadog is a robust monitoring solution that gathers key metrics from your Cassandra clusters and analyzes them for deviations or anomalies. Accordingly, it sends alerts based on the notification configuration.

Key Features

Here's a look at some key features of Datadog Apache Cassandra Monitor.

• Comprehensive Dashboard Datadog's comprehensive dashboard graphs the metrics of Cassandra with other metrics to give a unified picture of the state of your systems. There are a ton of things you can do on this dashboard and with all the insights it generates. For example, you can get information on the total latency of Cassandra instead of the recent ones to get a better idea of the trends over time. Likewise, you can monitor the overall read latency as well. Such metrics provide the right insights into the state of your Cassandra and the data stored in it.
• Themed Dashboards Themed dashboards are a unique feature that allows you to get information on specific themes or perspectives, like the performance of read or write actions in Cassandra. Undoubtedly, it provides insights into Cassandra's internal workings while helping you improve efficiency and troubleshooting.
• Sends Alerts Datadog not only converts the raw data coming from Cassandra but also monitors it. Essentially, it checks the values of certain important metrics against the established baseline values. In cases of deviations, Datadog sends an alert to your system. It checks your notification configurations and sends alerts accordingly.
• Variety Range of Devices With Datadog, you're not limited by the type of device. Instead, you can use it to monitor individual hosts, services, processes, metrics, and their different combinations to get a unified view of how your system is faring and what you can do to get more out of it.

Why do we recommend it?

Datadog is a robust tool that provides comprehensive and thematic dashboard insights into Cassandra's performance, making it a valuable tool for detailed analytics and alert management.

Who is it recommended for?

Ideal for organizations that require in-depth analysis and monitoring of Cassandra clusters across various devices and services.

Pricing

Datadog has a highly flexible pricing structure where you pay only for the features you use. Check out the customizable pricing here.

You can also start a free trial.

4. Site24X7 Cassandra Monitoring

Site24X7 has a Cassandra monitoring plugin integration to monitor your Cassandra database and clusters. This plugin tracks some key metrics and helps you stay on top of performance issues before they impact the wider organization.

Key Features

Below are some key features of Site24X7's Cassandra monitoring plugin.

• Wide Range of Metrics The Cassandra plugin tracks a wide range of metrics for your database, including, the total latency for read and write, throughput for read and write, pending and completed compaction tasks, timeout exceptions for read and write, and so much more. Armed with this information, you can better optimize your Cassandra databases.
• Real-time Monitoring Site24X7 provides the status of your Cassandra cluster in real-time to quickly identify which nodes are down or unreachable. This way, you can quickly get to the root cause of the problem and troubleshoot it before it has a wider impact.
• Secure The Site24x7 Cassandra Monitoring plugin works by collecting performance data from the Cassandra database and sending it to the Site24x7 cloud platform for analysis. The plugin uses JMX to collect data from the Cassandra database and sends it to Site24x7 through a secure HTTPS connection. This way, the chances of someone intercepting your content are less.
• Simplifies Management Site24x7 Cassandra Monitoring plugin provides a single console for monitoring and managing the Cassandra database. This simplifies management and reduces the complexity of managing multiple monitoring tools.
• Agentless Architecture The plugin's agentless architecture simplifies management and reduces the complexity of managing multiple monitoring tools. Moreover, it provides a single console for monitoring and managing the Cassandra database.

Why do we recommend it?

Site24X7's plugin integration is recommended for its real-time monitoring capabilities and secure data collection, providing a simplified management experience for Cassandra databases.

Who is it recommended for?

Suitable for organizations looking for a secure, real-time monitoring solution with a wide range of metrics for Cassandra databases.

In all, the Site24x7 Cassandra Monitoring plugin is a powerful monitoring solution that provides real-time monitoring, customizable dashboards, alerting, reporting, and historical data analysis capabilities. It helps users improve the performance, availability, and uptime of their Cassandra databases by proactively identifying and resolving potential issues.

5. Sematext Apache Cassandra Monitoring

Sematext is a reliable and extensible tool that provides real-time visibility into your Cassandra database's metrics, logs, and events in real-time.

Key Features

Let's now jump into Sematext's Cassandra monitoring features.

• Detects Performance Issues Sematext is a comprehensive monitoring solution that gathers all the metrics and logs in one place to provide a comprehensive view of the health and performance of your Cassandra clusters. With this unified information, you can spot the slow nodes that are leading to performance degradation, get alerts on slow read and write performance, and track long-pending or failed cluster operations. Also, you can drill down to each metric to understand the cause of its performance degradation.
• Tracks Metrics in Real Time Sematext correlates JVM metrics and JVM garbage collection logs to provide in-depth insights into the performance of your Cassandra clusters. More importantly, you get the metrics in real-time, so troubleshooting can be faster.
• Customizable Dashboards With Sematext, you get out-of-the-box dashboards to continuously monitor your Cassandra database performance. In these dashboards, you can quickly add or remove any component, combine different metrics, change views, and so much more.
• Generates Notifications You can configure notifications to meet your organization's operations and teams' preferences. In particular, you can set up anomaly detection or threshold alerts based on your baseline values. Also, you can customize notifications and send them via Slack, PagerDuty, email, etc. Moreover, there's no limit on the number of members who can receive notifications, and at the same time, you can provide role-based access to these notifications as well.

Why do we recommend it?

Sematext provides real-time visibility into Cassandra's metrics, logs, and events, making it a powerful tool for detecting performance issues and managing database health.

Who is it recommended for?

Best for businesses that need real-time, in-depth monitoring with customizable dashboards and extensive notification options for their Cassandra databases.

In all, Sematext's Cassandra monitoring tool is designed to provide real-time monitoring and management of Cassandra databases. It offers in-depth monitoring of various Cassandra metrics that helps you improve the performance, availability, and uptime of your Cassandra databases.

Bottom line

In conclusion, monitoring tools are essential for ensuring the optimal performance of a Cassandra database. The tools mentioned in this article – ManageEngine Applications Manager, AxonOps, Datadog, Site24X7, and Sematext – are all excellent choices for monitoring and managing the Cassandra database clusters. Each tool has its unique features, strengths, and weaknesses, and the best tool for you will depend on your specific needs and preferences. Regardless of which tool you choose, monitoring your Cassandra database regularly is crucial for maintaining its reliability, scalability, and availability. By leveraging the power of these monitoring tools, you can proactively identify issues and resolve them before they become critical problems, ensuring that your Cassandra database runs smoothly and efficiently.