Apache Cassandra has long had support for debian packaging in its tree, but users of RPM-based distributions such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Fedora have had to roll their own packages or use a binary tarball. Riptano wants Cassandra to be easy for everyone to use and manage, so we're pleased to announce contributing RPM builds of Apache Cassandra to the community.

To get started with these packges, follow these simple steps:

1. Choose your operating system and architecture at http://rpm.riptano.com/ and download the correct riptano-release RPM, which will install the Riptano repository. If you are unsure of which OS you have, you can look in /etc/redhat-release, and uname -m will tell you the machine's architecture. Both RHEL and Fedora are supported.
2. Install the package by running (as root) rpm -ivh riptano-release*.rpm
3. Once the repository is installed, installing Cassandra is as simple as running 'yum install cassandra'. After the Cassandra installation has completed, you can edit /usr/share/cassandra/cassandra.in.sh to adjust JVM options (for instance, to give Cassandra more memory) and the main configuration will be in /etc/cassandra/storage-conf.xml. For a more detailed explanation of storage-conf.xml tuning, refer to StorageConfiguration on the wiki.
4. Now that Cassandra is installed and configured, you can start it by running /etc/init.d/cassandra start. If you'd like Cassandra to automatically start on boot, run chkconfig cassandra on.

We hope that these packages will make life easier for those on RPM-based disributions and that you will enjoy using them.