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Apache Cassandra Mastery: From Dynamo Ring to LSM-Tree Cellular Internals

10-Phase Distributed Engineering & Storage Architecture Curriculum

Target Audience: Principal Distributed Systems Architect, Database Reliability Engineer, Staff Java/C++ Systems Engineer
Depth: Cellular Anatomy, CommitLog Buffers, Memtable SkipLists, SSTable Byte Formats, Merkle Trees, Tunable Consistency Mathematics, JVM G1GC / ZGC Tuning

Curriculum Syllabus & Study Roadmap

Phase Module Title File Link Focus Areas
Phase 1 Architecture, Dynamo Ring & Gossip phase_01_architecture_dynamo_ring_gossip.md Origin in 2008, Amazon Dynamo + Google Bigtable union, Murmur3Partitioner, Vnodes, Phi Accrual Failure Detector, Gossip states
Phase 2 CQL Cellular Data Modeling & Storage Mapping phase_02_cql_data_modeling_clustering_keys.md Partition Keys vs Clustering Keys, Wide-row physical storage layout, Static columns, Collections, Secondary vs SAI indexes
Phase 3 Storage Engine: CommitLog, Memtable & SSTables phase_03_storage_engine_lsm_memtable_sstable.md CommitLog segmented files, Memtable ConcurrentSkipListMap, Flush lifecycle, SSTable 8-component file anatomy, Bloom filters
Phase 4 Reads, Writes & Tunable Consistency phase_04_reads_writes_quorums_tunable_consistency.md Coordinator node routing, Write path (Row-level mutation), Read path (Reconciliation & Read Repair), Quorum math (\(R + W > N\))
Phase 5 Compaction Strategies & Tombstone Pathology phase_05_compaction_strategies_tombstones.md STCS, LCS, TWCS, Tombstone cellular markers, gc_grace_seconds, TombstoneOverwhelmingException, Zombie data resurrection
Phase 6 Anti-Entropy Repair, Hinted Handoff & Safety phase_06_anti_entropy_repair_hints_distributed_safety.md Merkle Tree generation, Full vs Incremental repair, Hinted handoff storage buffers, Paxos Lightweight Transactions (LWT)
Phase 7 JVM, GC, Off-Heap Memory & Kernel Tuning phase_07_jvm_gc_memory_hardware_tuning.md Java Heap vs Direct Off-Heap memory, G1GC vs Shenandoah/ZGC pause mitigation, JEMalloc off-heap allocators, Linux page cache
Phase 8 Security, Internode TLS & Multi-Tenancy phase_08_security_internode_tls_rbac.md Native protocol vs Internode TLS encryption, PasswordAuthenticator, Keyspace/Table RBAC, Transparent data encryption (TDE)
Phase 9 Real-World Choke Points & Telemetry phase_09_real_world_choke_points_monitoring.md Hot partitions (>100MB), Dropped mutations (MutationStage), nodetool tpstats, nodetool cfstats, Table-level metric monitoring
Phase 10 The Sandbox Destruction Labs phase_10_destruction_labs_playbook.md Lab 1: Tombstone avalanche crash, Lab 2: Compaction lag & read collapse, Lab 3: Dropped mutation queue saturation, Lab 4: Split-brain & zombie resurrection

Companion Deep Dives & Revision Artifacts