Apache Cassandra integration

Apache Cassandra is an open source NoSQL distributed database designed for high availability and horizontal scalability. The Cassandra integration monitors cluster health, read/write latencies, compaction, and JVM performance.


What it monitors	Read/write latencies, compaction tasks, JVM garbage collection, cluster node status, keyspace metrics
How it works	JMX Exporter exposes Cassandra metrics; Grafana Alloy scrapes them and forwards to Grafana Cloud
What you get	8 alerts + 3 dashboards (Overview, Nodes, Keyspaces) + log collection
Prerequisites	JMX Exporter deployed on each Cassandra node

What you’ll see in the dashboards

Overview — Cluster-wide node count (up/down), read/write latency trends, pending compaction tasks, and CPU/memory usage
Nodes — Per-node performance: latencies, connection message queues, garbage collection, and resource consumption
Keyspaces — Per-keyspace read/write latency, pending compactions, repair job tracking, and disk space usage

Key alerts

Alert	Severity
HighReadLatency / HighWriteLatency	Critical
BlockedCompactionTasksFound	Critical
HighPendingCompactionTasks	Warning
UnavailableWriteRequestsFound	Critical
HintsStoredOnNode	Warning
HighCpuUsage / HighMemoryUsage	Critical

Trade-offs

Strengths	Considerations
Deepest integration — 3 dashboards covering cluster, node, and keyspace levels	Requires JMX Exporter setup on every node (additional component)
Compaction and repair tracking for operational health	JVM metrics add cardinality
Log collection for system-level troubleshooting	More complex initial setup than other integrations

Documentation

View the full documentation. Learning path coming soon!

Apache Cassandra integration

The Apache Cassandra integration is the deepest integration in this module. It monitors cluster health, read and write latencies, compaction tasks, and JVM performance across 3 dashboards with 8 alerts.

The dashboards are organized by scope. The Overview shows cluster-wide metrics like node count, latency trends, and pending compactions. The Nodes dashboard drills into per-node performance. And the Keyspaces dashboard tracks per-keyspace read and write latency, repair jobs, and disk usage.

Cassandra setup is slightly more involved than other integrations because it requires deploying the JMX Exporter on each Cassandra node. Alloy then scrapes the metrics exposed by JMX. The tradeoff is that JVM metrics add cardinality, but the visibility into compaction, garbage collection, and repair health is worth it for production clusters.

If Apache Cassandra is your database, the documentation link below takes you to the full setup guide. A guided learning path is coming soon.

Apache Cassandra integration