Deploy and Host Apache Cassandra on Railway

Apache Cassandra is a distributed wide-column NoSQL database built for high write throughput and linear scale. It is queried with CQL. This template runs a single Cassandra 5.0 node with a persistent volume, password authentication switched on from the first boot, and a public TCP endpoint for CQL clients.

About Hosting Apache Cassandra

This template runs the official cassandra image (pinned by digest). Data lives on a volume mounted at /var/lib/cassandra, so keyspaces survive redeploys. PasswordAuthenticator and CassandraAuthorizer are enabled at boot, and the default cassandra/cassandra login is replaced with the generated CASSANDRA_PASSWORD within seconds of the node accepting connections. The JVM is capped to the container (1 GB heap, ActiveProcessorCount=2) so it does not size itself from the host's cores. Allow roughly a minute on first boot before CQL answers.

Agent contract:

CQL host (public): CASSANDRA_PUBLIC_HOST, port CASSANDRA_PUBLIC_PORT (TCP proxy to 9042)
CQL host (private network): CASSANDRA_PRIVATE_HOST, port 9042
Username: cassandra
Password variable: CASSANDRA_PASSWORD
No HTTP health path; check readiness by a CQL login

docker run --rm --entrypoint cqlsh cassandra:5.0 $CASSANDRA_PUBLIC_HOST $CASSANDRA_PUBLIC_PORT \
  -u cassandra -p "$CASSANDRA_PASSWORD" \
  -e "CREATE KEYSPACE IF NOT EXISTS app WITH replication = {'class':'SimpleStrategy','replication_factor':1}; DESCRIBE KEYSPACES;"

Why Deploy Apache Cassandra on Railway?

Railway is a singular platform to deploy your infrastructure stack. Railway will host your infrastructure so you don't have to deal with configuration, while allowing you to vertically and horizontally scale it.

By deploying Apache Cassandra on Railway, you are one step closer to supporting a complete full-stack application with minimal burden. Host your servers, databases, AI agents, and more on Railway.

Secure by default — unauthenticated CQL is rejected and the default password does not work.
Data survives redeploys — the volume is preconfigured and verified with a write, redeploy, read.
Zero configuration — no variables to fill in; the contract above is everything a client needs.
Standard drivers work — any CQL driver connects over the TCP endpoint.

Common Use Cases

Time-series and event logging — append-heavy workloads keyed by device, user or day.
Agent and session state — wide rows for conversation history and activity feeds.
Development and test clusters — a real Cassandra to run drivers and schemas against.

Dependencies for Apache Cassandra Hosting

A volume mounted at /var/lib/cassandra (included in this template).

Deployment Dependencies

apache/cassandra — upstream server
cassandra on Docker Hub — the pinned image this template deploys