Cluster Setup

This page provides a quick reference for cluster initialization and provisioning. For a complete walkthrough, see the Tutorial.

Quick Start

# Initialize a 3-node cluster with i4i.xlarge instances and 1 stress node
easy-db-lab init my-cluster --db 3 --instance i4i.xlarge --app 1

# Provision AWS infrastructure
easy-db-lab up

# Set up your shell environment
source env.sh

Or combine init and up:

easy-db-lab init my-cluster --db 3 --instance i4i.xlarge --app 1 --up

Initialize

The init command creates local configuration files but does not provision AWS resources.

easy-db-lab init <cluster-name> [options]

Common Options

For the complete options list, see the Tutorial or run easy-db-lab init --help.

Storage Requirements

Database instances need a data disk separate from the root volume. This can come from either:

• Instance store (local NVMe) — Instance types with a d suffix (e.g., i3.xlarge, m5d.xlarge, c5d.2xlarge) include local NVMe storage.
• EBS volumes — Attach an EBS volume using --ebs.type (e.g., --ebs.type gp3).

If the selected instance type has no instance store and --ebs.type is not specified, up will fail with an error. For example, c5.2xlarge has no local storage, so you must specify EBS:

easy-db-lab init my-cluster --instance c5.2xlarge --ebs.type gp3 --ebs.size 200

Launch

The up command provisions all AWS infrastructure:

easy-db-lab up

What Gets Created

• S3 bucket for cluster state
• VPC with subnets and security groups
• EC2 instances (Cassandra, Stress, Control nodes)
  • Control node: m5d.xlarge (NVMe-backed instance; K3s data is stored on NVMe to avoid filling the root volume)
• K3s cluster across all nodes (Cassandra, Stress, Control)

Options

Shut Down

Destroy all cluster infrastructure:

easy-db-lab down

Next Steps

After your cluster is running:

1. Configure Cassandra - Select version and apply configuration
2. Shell Aliases - Set up convenient shortcuts