With the configuration complete, start up your node.

If you used the Tarball install:

bin/cassandra -p cassandra.pid

If you used apt-get for the install:

sudo service cassandra start

Cassandra comes with the nodetool utility, which is very useful for performing operational duties, as well as for assessing the health of your node and/or cluster. To verify that your node has started, running a nodetool status should return information on your cluster, based on the gossip information held by the node that you are logged into:

nodetool status

Datacenter: LakesidePark
===============
Status=Up/Down
|/ State=Normal/Leaving/Joining/Moving
-- Address Load Tokens Owns (effective) Host ID Rack
UN 192.168.0.100 1.33 MiB 256 100.0% 954d394b-f96f-473f-ad23-cbe4fd0672c8 R40

See the Using Cassandra section for more information on nodetool status.

Of course, you can always verify that it is running by checking the process scheduler and grep for Cassandra:

ps -ef | grep cassandra

If your node fails to start, check your system.log file (location defined in conf/logback.xml).

To bring your node down cleanly, it is a good idea to disable gossip and drain the node (includes flushing data in RAM to disk) first:

nodetool disablegossip
nodetool drain

Once those commands are complete, then the Cassandra process can be stopped.

For the Tarball install:

kill cat cassandra.pid

For the apt-get install:

sudo service cassandra stop