Stopping a DataStax Enterprise node

Stopping DataStax Enterprise and the DataStax Agent on a node.

To speed up the restart process, before stopping the dse service, run nodetool drain. This step writes the current memtables to disk. When you restart the node, Cassandra does not need to read through the commit log. If you have durable writes set to false, which is unlikely, there is no commit log and you must drain the node to prevent losing data.

Running nodetool drain before using the cassandra-stop command to stop a stand-alone process is pointless because the cassandra-stop command drains the node before stopping it.

To stop the service on a node:

$ nodetool -h drain host name
$ sudo service dse stop

To stop the stand-alone process on a node:

From the install location:

$ install_location/bin/dse cassandra-stop ## Use sudo if necessary

In the unlikely event that the cassandra-stop command fails because it cannot find the process DataStax Enterprise Java process ID (PID), the output instructs you to find the DataStax Enterprise Java process ID (PID) manually, and stop the process using its PID number.

$ ps auwx | grep dse
$ bin/dse cassandra-stop -p PID