This talk was held at the 13th meeting on Sept 23rd 2014 by André Vocat. In the process of proposing a highly available, redundant and performant infrastructure for a large Swiss Telco operator, the project team has opted for Cassandra as one of the key components. The resulting platform has, after more than one year in operation, proven to be the right choice. The session will show the chosen architecture, give an insight in to the development and deployment and shows the current status of the platform which is just about to see its first upgrade.

1. B r i d g i n g t h e G a p
SwissBigDataUserGroup 23.09.2014 / André Vocat
Cassandra @ Swiss Telco Operator

2. •Introduction
•System environment
•System overview
•Non functional requirements
•System load
•System architecture
•Cassandra cluster
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Intersys AG | Zuchwil | www.intersys.ch
Agenda

3. •software architect, developer and project lead working for Intersys AG in Zuchwil.
•holding an engineering degree in electrical engineering
•more than 20 years experience developing software and designing software architectures
•specifically for the telecommunications market.
•lead architect of the system presented today
–predecessor system (started in late 1999)
–first version of this critical platform (started in 2002)
–complete renewal (started in 2012)
–production use (started mid 2013)
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Intersys AG | Zuchwil | www.intersys.ch
Bio

4. Intersys consists of Interfaces and Systems
Interfaces
Exchange of data between
Systems of different Origin
Systems
Development of Software
Systems and system
components
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Intersys AG | Zuchwil | www.intersys.ch
Interfaces and Systems
Main offerings - Software Development (specify, implement, test, run, support) - Test Management (independent software quality certification)

5. Fast Facts
Founded
1999
Number of Employees
27 (most of them higher education in IT or electrical engineering)
Locations
Zuchwil (HQ), Zürich (Branch)
Common Stock
CHF 250’000.-, owned by employees
DataStax Partner
First official DataStax Integration Partner in Switzerland
ISO 9001:2008 certified We educate apprentices
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Intersys AG | Zuchwil | www.intersys.ch

6. 6
Intersys AG | Zuchwil | www.intersys.ch
System environment

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Intersys AG | Zuchwil | www.intersys.ch
System overview

8. •availability
•high performance
•flexibility
•scalability
•upgradeability (minimal / «zero» downtime)
•surrounding systems must not affect others
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Intersys AG | Zuchwil | www.intersys.ch
Non functional requirements

9. System load per hour
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Intersys AG | Zuchwil | www.intersys.ch
0
2'000'000
4'000'000
6'000'000
8'000'000
00.00 h
01.00 h
02.00 h
03.00 h
04.00 h
05.00 h
06.00 h
07.00 h
08.00 h
09.00 h
10.00 h
11.00 h
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13.00 h
14.00 h
15.00 h
16.00 h
17.00 h
18.00 h
19.00 h
20.00 h
21.00 h
22.00 h
23.00 h
request count per hour
0
50'000
100'000
150'000
200'000
250'000
00.00 h
01.00 h
02.00 h
03.00 h
04.00 h
05.00 h
06.00 h
07.00 h
08.00 h
09.00 h
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15.00 h
16.00 h
17.00 h
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19.00 h
20.00 h
21.00 h
22.00 h
23.00 h
update count per hour

10. System load per day
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Intersys AG | Zuchwil | www.intersys.ch
0
500'000
1'000'000
1'500'000
SO
MO
DI
MI
DO
FR
SA
update count per day
0
20'000'000
40'000'000
60'000'000
80'000'000
100'000'000
120'000'000
140'000'000
SO
MO
DI
MI
DO
FR
SA
request count per day

11. System load per month
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Intersys AG | Zuchwil | www.intersys.ch
0
500'000'000
1'000'000'000
1'500'000'000
2'000'000'000
2'500'000'000
nov
dez
jan
feb
mar
apr
mai
jun
requests count per month
0
5'000'000
10'000'000
15'000'000
20'000'000
25'000'000
30'000'000
mar
apr
mai
jun
jul
aug
update count per month

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Intersys AG | Zuchwil | www.intersys.ch
System architecture

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Intersys AG | Zuchwil | www.intersys.ch
Cassandra Cluster internals

14. •Lessons learned
–Indexed queries memory usage
–write operation only as batch
–regularly repair data
–range query only for small data amount
–do not delete column and reinsert
–regularly upgrade cassandra version
•Open learnings
–Optimize after version upgrade
–still more to come…
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Intersys AG | Zuchwil | www.intersys.ch
Lessons learned / Open learnings

15. •André Vocat
andre.vocat@intersys.ch
+41 32 625 76 84
+41 79 233 33 94
•Reto Gantenbein
reto.gantenbein@intersys.ch
+41 32 625 76 93
+41 79 701 47 35
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Intersys AG | Zuchwil | www.intersys.ch
Koordinaten