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Section 3 · Database integrations

Set up Apache Cassandra monitoring with Grafana Cloud integrations

Estimated time: 1 min

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 + 4 dashboards (Overview, Nodes, Keyspaces, Logs)
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, garbage collection, and resource consumption
Keyspaces: Pending compactions, repair job tracking, and disk space usage
Logs: Cassandra system logs collected alongside the metrics

Key alerts

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

Documentation

View the Apache Cassandra integration documentation.

Read script

Script

The Apache Cassandra integration monitors cluster health, read and write latencies, compaction tasks, and JVM performance across 4 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. The Keyspaces dashboard tracks repair jobs and disk usage. A Logs dashboard collects Cassandra system logs alongside the metrics.

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.