NativeX recently transitioned a large portion of their backend infrastructure from Microsoft SQL Server to Apache Cassandra. Check out our story about how we were successful at getting our .NET web apps to reliably connect to Cassandra. Learn about FluentCassandra, Snowflake, Hector, and IKVM. It's a story of struggle and perseverance, where everyone lives happily ever after.

1. reimagining the business of
apps
©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
The Perils and Triumphs of using
Cassandra at a .NET/Microsoft Shop

2. About the Presenters
Jeff Smoley – Sr. Infrastructure Architect
Derek Bromenshenkel – Infrastructure Architect

3. Agenda
• About NativeX
• Why Cassandra?
• Challenges
• Auto Id Generation
• FluentCassandra
• Hector
• IKVM.NET
• HectorNet
• Reporting Integration
• Data Modeling
• Lessons Learned

4. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
About NativeX
• Formerly W3i
• Home Office in Sartell, MN
• 75 miles NW of Minneapolis
• Remote Offices in MSP and SF
• ~120 Employees

5. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
What NativeX Does
• Marketing technology
platform that enables
developers to build
successful business around
their apps.
• We provide Publishers with
a way to monetize and
Advertisers with a way to
gain distribution through a
native ad experience.

6. Mobile Vanity Metrics
• Over 1B unique devices
• 1000s of Apps
• > 135M Monthly Active Users
• > 200GB of data ingest per week

7. Agenda
• About NativeX
• Why Cassandra?
• Challenges
• Auto Id Generation
• FluentCassandra
• Hector
• IKVM.NET
• HectorNet
• Reporting Integration
• Data Modeling
• Lessons Learned

8. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
Backstory
• In early 2012 realized
infrastructure needed to
change to support high
growth business.
• From 100M session/quarter
to 6B+.
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
2011 Q4 2012 Q1 2012 Q2 2012 Q3 2012 Q4 2013 Q1 2013 Q2 2013 Q3
Billions
API Requests

9. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
Original OLTP Architecture
• Microsoft SQL Server
• 2 Node Cluster (Failover)
• 12 cores / node
• 192 GB mem / node
• Compellent SAN
• 172 Tiered Disk
• SSD, FC, SATA

10. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
Objectives
Scale
• Horizontal
• Incremental cost
structure
Resiliency
• No single point
of failure
• Geographically
distributed

11. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
What is NoSQL
• Stands for Not Only SQL.
• The NoSQL movement is about understanding problems and
focusing on solutions.
• It‟s not about silver bullets and black boxes.
• It is about using the right tool for the right problem.

12. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
Researched Products
• Compared features like:
• Distributed / Shared Nothing
• Multi-Cluster Support
• Maturity & Popularity
• Documentation
• .NET Support

13. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
Selecting Cassandra
DB Distributed Maturity High Availability Style Documentation Native Language Drivers Popularity
MongoDB Yes Medium Yes Document - NoSQL Excellent Major Languages High
VoltDB Yes Low Yes RDBMS - SQL Good Major Languages Low
MySQL Cluster Yes High Yes RDBMS - SQL & Key/Value Excellent Major Languages Medium
MySQL ScaleDB Yes Low Yes RDBMS - SQL Good Major Languages Low
Cassandra Yes Medium Yes Key/Value - Column Family Excellent Major; Poor .Net High
CouchDB No Medium Yes Document - NoSQL ? No - REST only Medium
RavenDB Yes? Low No Document - NoSQL Poor C#, JS, REST Medium
Couchbase Yes Medium Yes Key/Value - Document Good Major Languages Medium
*Disclaimer, this data was complied in spring of 2012 and my not reflect the
current state of each database system shown here.
http://nosql.mypopescu.com/ is a helpful site for discovering and learning about
different DB Systems.

14. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
Top Choices
• MySQL Cluster
• Relational and very familiar.
• Has physical row limitations.
• MongoDB
• Data modeling was simpler than C*.
• Not very clear if it had multi-cluster support.
• Cassandra
• At the very core it‟s all about scalability and resiliency.
• Data modeling a little scary, immature .Net support.

15. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
Why Cassandra?
• Multi-node
• Multi-cluster
• Highly Available
• Durable
• Shared Nothing
• Tunable Consistency

16. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
Cassandra at NativeX
• C* was not a replacement DB system.
• We continue to use MS SQL Server alongside C*.
• SQL Server used for storing configuration data.
• C* solves a very specific problem for us.
• Writing large volumes of data quickly.
• Reading very specific data out of a large record set.

17. Challenges
• C* does not have Auto Id generation.
• How to connect to C* with C#?
• Finding a connector with good Failure Tolerance.
• How to integrate our reporting system?

18. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
Auto ID Generation
• Pre-existing requirements
• Unique, 64-bit positive integers
• Increasing (sortable) a plus
• Previously SQL Server Identity column
• A Time-based UUID is sortable and unique
• Changed everything we could
• The future for us

19. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
Auto ID – What are the options?
• SQL dummy table
• Easy & familiar, but limited
• Pre-generated range
• Proposed by Datastax‟s Architect
• Distributed, but more complicated to implement
• Sharding [Instagram]
• Discovered too late
• Unfamiliar with Postgres

20. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
We chose Snowflake
• Built by Twitter, Apache 2.0 license
• https://github.com/twitter/snowflake
• “… network service for generating unique ID numbers at high
scale..”
• Same motivation; MySQL -> C*
• A few tweaks for our Windows environment

21. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
Technical reasons for Snowflake
• Meets all requirements
• Tested in high transaction system
• Java based [Scala] implementation
• Thrift server
• Run as a Windows service with Apache Daemon
• Con: Requires Apache Zookeeper
• Coordinate the worker id

22. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
Connecting to Snowflake
• Built our own .NET
Snowflake Client
• Snowflake server on each
web node
• Local instance is primary
• Round robin failover to other
nodes
• Auto failover AND recovery
• “Circuit Breaker” pattern
Web
App
SF
Server 1
Web
App
SF
Server 3
Web
App
SF
Server 2
Web
App
SF
Server 4

23. Challenges
• How to connect to C* with C#?
• Finding a connector with good Failure Tolerance.
• How to integrate our reporting system?

24. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
Connecting to Cassandra with C#
• Thrift alone too low level
• Needs
• CQL support
• Active development / support
• Wants
• ADO.NET / LINQ feel
• ????
• FluentCassandra is where we started

25. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
Vetting FluentCassandra
• Pros
• Open source -
https://github.com/fluentcassandra/fluentcassandra
• Nick Berardi, project owner, is excellent
• Designed for CQL
• Familiar feel
• Were able to start project development with it

26. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
Vetting FluentCassandra
• Cons
• Immaturity
• Few users with high transaction system
• Permanent node blacklisting
• Lacked auto retry
• Couldn‟t live with these limitations
• Tried adding resources dedicated to maturing it

27. Challenges
• Finding a connector with good Failure Tolerance.
• How to integrate our reporting system?

28. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
Hector: Yes, please
• Popular C* connector
• Use cases matching ours
• Good maturity
• Auto node discovery
• Auto retry
• Auto failure recovery
• Written in Java – major roadblock

29. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
Help!
• We knew we still needed help.
• We found a company named Concord.
• Based out of the Twin Cites.
• Specialize in System, Process, and Data Integration.
• http://concordusa.com/

30. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
Concord’s Recommendation
• Concord recommended that we use IKVM.NET to port Hector to
a .NET assembly.
• They had previous success using IKVM for other Java to .NET
ports.
• They felt that maturing FluentCassandra was going to take
longer than our timeline allowed.

31. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
About the IKVM.NET Project
• http://www.ikvm.net/
• Open Source Project.
• Main contributor is Jeroen Frijters.
• He is actively contributing to the project.
• License allows for use in commercial applications.

32. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
What is IKVM.NET?
• IKVM.NET includes the following components:
• A Java Virtual Machine implemented in .NET.
• A .NET implementation of the Java class libraries.
• Set of tools that enable Java and .NET interoperability.

33. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
Uses for IKVM
• Drop-in JVM
• Included is a distribution of a .NET implementation of a Java
Virtual Machine.
• Allows you to run jar files using the .NET stack.
• Example: ikvm -jar myapp.jar

34. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
Uses for IKVM
• Use Java libraries in your .NET applications
• Using ikvmc you can compile Java bytecode to .NET IL.
• Example: ikvmc -target:library mylib.jar

35. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
Uses for IKVM
• Develop .NET applications in Java
• Write code in Java.
• Compile to JVM bytecode.
• Use ikvmc to produce a .NET Executable.
• Can also use .NET API‟s in Java code using the ikvmstub
application to generate a Java jar file.
• Example: ikvmstub MyDotNetAssemblyName

36. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
Hector Converted to .NET
• Per Concord‟s recommendation we chose to compile the Hector
jar into a .NET Assembly.
• Hector and all of it‟s dependencies are pulled into one .NET
dll that can be referenced by any .NET assembly.
• In addition you will have to reference some core IKVM
assemblies.
• Each Java dependency is given it‟s own namespace with in
the .NET dll.

37. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
HectorNet
• Concord also created a dll called HectorNet that wraps some of
the Hector behaviors and makes it feel more like .NET.
• Such as supporting connection strings.
• Mapping Thrift byte arrays to .NET data types.
• Mapping to native .NET collections instead of using Java
collections.

38. Why Not DataStax C# Driver?
• We built everything using CQL 2.0.
• Wasn‟t ready in time for our launch date.

39. Challenges
• How to integrate our reporting system?

40. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
Integrating Reporting
OLTP
C*
Extract Transform
CUBE
SSAS
OLAP
MS SQL
Load
ETL - SSIS

41. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
Integrating Reporting
• The SSIS Extract process uses C# Script Tasks.
• Script Task needs references to HectorNet and all of its
dependencies.
• SSIS can only reference assemblies that are in the GAC.
• Assemblies in the GAC have to be Signed.

42. Agenda
• About NativeX
• Why Cassandra?
• Challenges
• Auto Id Generation
• FluentCassandra
• Hector
• IKVM.NET
• HectorNet
• Reporting Integration
• Data Modeling
• Lessons Learned

43. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
Data Classification
• NativeX has three major classifications of data.
• Configuration or Master Data
• Activity Tracking
• Device History

44. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
Configuration Data
• Also referred to as Lookup Data or Master Data.
• This data is relatively small in terms of record counts.
• 10s – 100,000s of records not millions.
• Is used to operationally run our products.

45. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
Configuration Data
• Examples in NativeX‟s business:
• Mobile Apps
• Offers
• Campaigns
• Restrictions
• Queue Settings

46. Relational Data
Configuration data is typically relational in nature and
therefore we continue to store it in MS SQL Server.

47. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
C* Data Modeling Basics
• Data is stored inside of Column Families using nested
Key/Value Pairs.
• A CF can be thought of as a Table.
• They are made up of Rows and Columns.
• However, CFs do not have direct relationships to each other.
• You typically deal with one row at a time.

48. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
Rows
A Row is the first level of the nested Key/Value pairs.
• A Row consists of:
• A Row Key (unique to the CF).
• A Row Value which is 1 to many Columns.
• A Row will typically represent:
• Single Entity/Record.
• Multiple records (known as a Wide Row CF).

49. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
Columns
A Column is the second level of the nested Key/Value pairs.
• A Column consists of:
• A Column Name (Key) (unique to the Row).
• A Column Value.

50. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
Column Name
• Column Names can consists of a value of any data type.
• String, Integer, Date, UUID (GUID), etc.
• The Column Name is stored as part of every column.
• This means it has an impact to the size of your data.
• Can also use the Column Name to store data.

51. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
Column Value
• A Column Value will typically contain:
• A single value such as an integer, string, date, etc.
• A whole record usually represented in XML, JSON, or some
other document or object structure.

52. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
CF - Putting it all Together

53. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
Wide Row CF
• A collection of like records organized into a single row.
• Each record is stored as a distinct column.
• Not unheard of for each row to have millions of columns.
• Data is often denormalized into XML or JSON documents.
• Good for storing:
• Time Series Data
• Event Series Data
• Logging Data
• Tracking Data

54. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
Wide Row Examples

55. Agenda
• About NativeX
• Why Cassandra?
• Challenges
• Auto Id Generation
• FluentCassandra
• Hector
• IKVM.NET
• HectorNet
• Reporting Integration
• Data Modeling
• Lessons Learned

56. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
Lessons Learned
• Get into production early
• Migration is hard
• Data Import = Reality
• Dev team needs to be integrated right away
• Training
• Operations / Troubleshooting
• Understanding your I/O profile is really important
• Are you sure you‟re write heavy?
• Effects your hardware config, i.e. SSDs for us

57. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
Lessons Learned
• Cluster sizing and hardware selection
• Dependent on data set + workload
• You might get it wrong the first time
• Enterprise vs. „commodity‟
• Cassandra changes quickly
• You need to keep up
• Leverage mailing list, forums, release notes
• Scalable systems like C* have a massive amount of knobs, you
need to know them

58. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
Projections
Month Aug-13 Sep-13 Oct-13 Nov-13 Dec-13 Jan-14 Feb-14 Mar-14 Apr-14
Pub DAU 18,500,000 28,500,000 33,500,000 38,500,000 43,500,000 48,500,000 53,500,000 58,500,000 63,500,000
Adv DAU 12,000,000 6,600,000 7,600,000 8,600,000 9,600,000 10,600,000 11,600,000 12,600,000 13,600,000
Total Devices 1,060,000,000 1,120,000,000 1,180,000,000 1,240,000,000 1,300,000,000 1,360,000,000 1,420,000,000 1,480,000,000 1,540,000,000
Nodes Need for Disk 9 12 13 15 16 17 19 20 21
Nodes Need for BF 22 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
Nodes Need for RR 14 16 19 22 24 27 30 33 35
Capacities
Number of Nodes 30.00
Usable Space/Node (GB) 600.00
Total Usable Space (GB) 18,000.00
Memory/Node (GB) 64.00
JVM Heap Size (GB) 8.00
BF Size / Node (GB) 1.50
Replication Factor 3.00
Read Requests/Node 1,000.00
Understand which KPI represents Node capacity.

59. DSE for the Win!
• We use DataStax Enterprise.
• Mainly for support, which continues to be a life saver.

60. ©2013 NativeX Holdings, LLC
Thank you!
• Join the MSP C* Meetup
• http://www.meetup.com/Minneapolis-St-Paul-Cassandra-Meetup/
• Contact us
• Jeff.Smoley@nativex.com
• Derek.Bromenshenkel@nativex.com @breakingtrail
• Slide Deck
• http://www.slideshare.net/jjsmoley/the-perils-and-triumphs-of-
using-cassandra-at-a-netmicrosoft-shop