Test Cassandra baseline functionality

Overview

Now that Cassandra is installed on your GCP C4A Arm virtual machine, verify that it’s running and functioning properly.

Start Cassandra

Run Cassandra in the background:

    

        
        
cassandra -R

    

The -R flag allows Cassandra to run in the background as a daemon. The first startup may take 30–60 seconds as it initializes.

Check logs to ensure Cassandra started successfully:

    

        
        
tail -f ~/cassandra/logs/system.log

    

Look for the message “Startup complete”, which indicates Cassandra is fully initialized.

Check Cassandra status

    

        
        
nodetool status

    

The output is similar to:

    

        
        Datacenter: datacenter1
=======================
Status=Up/Down
|/ State=Normal/Leaving/Joining/Moving
--  Address    Load        Tokens  Owns (effective)  Host ID                               Rack
UN  127.0.0.1  162.51 KiB  16      100.0%            78774686-39f3-47e7-87c3-3abc4f02a835  rack1

        
    

For a single-node setup, the output should indicate that the node is Up (U) and Normal (N), confirming that your Cassandra instance is running and ready to accept queries.

Connect with CQLSH

cqlsh is the interactive command-line shell for Cassandra that allows you to run Cassandra Query Language (CQL) commands.

    

        
        
cqlsh

    

You’ll enter the CQL (Cassandra Query Language) shell.

Create a keyspace

A keyspace in Cassandra is similar to a database in SQL systems. Create a simple keyspace testks with a replication factor of 1 (suitable for a single-node setup):

    

        
        
CREATE KEYSPACE testks WITH replication = {'class':'SimpleStrategy','replication_factor' : 1};

    

Verify the keyspace was created:

    

        
        
DESCRIBE KEYSPACES;

    

The output is similar to:

    

        
        cqlsh> DESCRIBE KEYSPACES;

system       system_distributed  system_traces  system_virtual_schema
system_auth  system_schema       system_views   testks

        
    

Create a table

Create a users table with three columns:

    

        
        
USE testks;

CREATE TABLE users (
   id UUID PRIMARY KEY,
   name text,
   age int
);

    

Insert data

Insert two sample rows into the users table. The uuid() function generates a unique identifier for each row:

    

        
        
INSERT INTO users (id, name, age) VALUES (uuid(), 'Alice', 30);
INSERT INTO users (id, name, age) VALUES (uuid(), 'Bob', 25);

    

Query data

Retrieve all rows from the users table:

    

        
        
SELECT * FROM users;

    

The output is similar to:

    

        
         id                                   | age | name
--------------------------------------+-----+-------
 c08dafde-17f0-4a4a-82b8-54455bb07836 |  25 |   Bob
 d47eb93c-3988-4aa1-bc85-9561500a6893 |  30 | Alice

(2 rows)

        
    

This baseline test verifies that Cassandra 5.0.5 is installed and running correctly on the VM, confirming node status, CQLSH connectivity, and basic database operations.

Press Ctrl-D to exit the Cassandra Query Shell.