Cassandra Practice Test

Which component is primarily affected by excessively large partitions in Cassandra?

1. Memory management

2. Data streaming

3. Compaction performance

4. Indexing speed

The correct answer is: Compaction performance

Excessively large partitions in Cassandra can significantly impact compaction performance. Compaction is the process that merges and reorganizes SSTables (Sorted String Tables) to improve read performance and reclaim disk space. When partitions become excessively large, the compaction process can become inefficient and slow, as the system has to manage and process a larger amount of data at once. Large partitions may lead to higher latencies during reads and writes, because the system has to sift through more data to locate the necessary information. Additionally, this can result in increased disk I/O, further taxing the system's resources. In a scenario with large partitions, compaction may also need to happen more frequently, as the overall size of the data increases, which can lead to more fragmented data storage. Consequently, by adversely affecting how quickly and effectively data can be compacted, excessively large partitions hinder the overall performance of Cassandra, particularly in maintaining optimized read and write operations.