Introduction to Apache Cassandra and DataStax Community Edition¶

The best way to get acquainted with Cassandra is to install the binary tarball distribution and start a single-node cluster. To install for development or production, see Installing a Cassandra Cluster.

There are three ways to get going on a single node cluster:

• Installing the DataStax Community Binaries on Linux or Mac as Root: Use if you have root permissions (sudo).
• Installing the DataStax Community Binaries on Linux or Mac as User: Use if you have do not have or want to use root permissions.
• Installing the DataStax Community Binaries on Windows

To learn more about Cassandra, see:

• What's New in Apache Cassandra 1.1
• Introduction to CQL (Cassandra Query Language)
• Understanding the Cassandra Architecture
• Understanding the Cassandra Data Model
• Managing and Accessing Data in Cassandra
• DataStax Community Release Notes