Hot backup required tools

Before we begin, let's make sure your system has all the necessary tools installed.

You'll need the following:

  • Cassandra nodetool: Command-line tool for managing Cassandra clusters, used for creating database snapshots
  • tar: Utility for archiving backup files
  • cqlsh: Command-line interface for executing CQL queries against the Cassandra database
  • curl: Tool for transferring data with URLs, useful for interacting with the Elasticsearch API
  • jq: Lightweight command-line JSON processor for parsing and manipulating JSON data in scripts

Python compatibility for cqlsh

cqlsh requires Python 3.9. If your Linux distribution provides a newer Python version by default, you must install Python 3.9 alongside it and explicitly tell cqlsh which interpreter to use. You can do this by setting the CQLSH_PYTHON environment variable when running cqlsh: sudo -u cassandra CQLSH_PYTHON=/path/to/python3.9 cqlsh.

If any tools are missing, install them using your package manager. For example:

  • sudo apt install jq for DEB-based operating systems
  • sudo yum install jq for RPM-based operating systems