As stated in the title, we are having a problem with our Cassandra cluster. There are 9 nodes with a replication factor of 3 using NetworkTopologyStrategy. All in the same DC and Rack. Cassandra version is 3.11.4 (planning to move on 3.11.10). Instances have 4 CPU and 32 GB RAM. (planning to move on 8 CPU)
Whenever we try to run repair on our cluster (using Cassandra Reaper on one of our nodes), we lose one node somewhere in the process. We quickly stop the repair, restart Cassandra service on the node and wait for it to join the ring. Therefore we are never able to run repair these days.
I observed the problem and realized that this problem is caused by high CPU usage on some of our nodes (exactly 3). You may see the 1 week interval graph in below. Ups and downs are caused by the usage of the app. In the mornings, it's very low.
I compared the running processes on each node and there is nothing extra on the high CPU nodes. I compared the configurations. They are identical. Couldn't find any difference.
I also realized that these nodes are the ones that take most of the traffic. See the 1 week interval graph in below. Both sent & received bytes.
I made some research. I found this thread and at the end it is recommended to set dynamic_snitch: false in Cassandra configuration. I looked at our snitch strategy which is GossipingPropertyFileSnitch. In practice, this strategy should work properly but I guess it doesn't.
The job of a snitch is to provide information about your network topology so that Cassandra can efficiently route requests.
My only observation that could be cause of this issue is there is a file called cassandra-topology.properties which is specifically told to be removed if using GossipingPropertyFileSnitch
The rack and datacenter for the local node are defined in cassandra-rackdc.properties and propagated to other nodes via gossip. If cassandra-topology.properties exists, it is used as a fallback, allowing migration from the PropertyFileSnitch.
I did not remove this file as I couldn't find any hard proof that this is causing the issue. If you have any knowledge on this or see any other reason to my problem, I would appreciate your help.
