Apache Cassandra is radically different to relational databases, understanding the core concepts and operations is key to successful projects. As it is Open Source everyone can read the code and build an understanding. For the last five years consultants at The Last Pickle have been helping people around the world understand the core concepts and operations. We've found the extra knowledge helps developers, operators, and managers deliver successful projects. In this talk Mick Semb Wever, Consultant at The Last Pickle, will outline the basics of how Cassandra operates as a peer-to-peer cluster to store and retrieve data, how it handles consistency, and how it stores data on disk. About the Speaker Michael Semb Wever Team Member, The Last Pickle Mick Semb Wever is a Team Member and Consultant at The Last Pickle (thelastpickle.com). A professional services company that works with clients to deliver and improve Apache Cassandra based solutions. He's based in Australia, is a PMC Chair for Apache Tiles and a DataStax MVP for Apache Cassandra. Mick is an advocate for change towards microservices built upon modern data-driven practices that introduce eventually consistent highly available solutions using Apache technologies like Cassandra.