Deploy and Host ScyllaDB on Railway

ScyllaDB is a Cassandra-compatible NoSQL database written in C++ for low-latency, high-throughput workloads. It is queried with CQL and works with standard Cassandra drivers. This template runs a single ScyllaDB 2025.1 node with a persistent volume, password authentication switched on from the first boot, and a public TCP endpoint for CQL clients.

About Hosting ScyllaDB

This template runs the official scylladb/scylla image (pinned by digest). Data lives on a volume mounted at /var/lib/scylla, so keyspaces survive redeploys. PasswordAuthenticator and CassandraAuthorizer are enabled at boot, and the default cassandra/cassandra login is replaced with the generated SCYLLA_PASSWORD within seconds of the node accepting connections. The node is capped to 2 shards and 1.5 GB of memory (--smp 2 --memory 1536M) so it does not size itself from the host's cores or RAM. The listen addresses are pinned to the container's single IPv4 address, which avoids the image's dual-address startup crash. Allow a minute or two on first boot before CQL answers.

Agent contract:

CQL host (public): SCYLLA_PUBLIC_HOST, port SCYLLA_PUBLIC_PORT (TCP proxy to 9042)
CQL host (private network): SCYLLA_PRIVATE_HOST, port 9042
Username: cassandra
Password variable: SCYLLA_PASSWORD
No HTTP health path; check readiness by a CQL login

docker run --rm --entrypoint cqlsh scylladb/scylla:2025.1 $SCYLLA_PUBLIC_HOST $SCYLLA_PUBLIC_PORT \
  -u cassandra -p "$SCYLLA_PASSWORD" \
  -e "CREATE KEYSPACE IF NOT EXISTS app WITH replication = {'class':'SimpleStrategy','replication_factor':1}; DESCRIBE KEYSPACES;"

Why Deploy ScyllaDB 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 ScyllaDB 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.
Cassandra 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.
Cassandra drop-in for development — run existing drivers and schemas against a lighter server.

Dependencies for ScyllaDB Hosting

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

Deployment Dependencies

scylladb/scylladb — upstream server
scylladb/scylla on Docker Hub — the pinned image this template deploys