Slides: https://www.slideshare.net/DataStax/optimizing-your-cluster-with-coordinator-nodes-eric-lubow-simplereach-cassandra-summit-2016 | With the addition of vnodes (Virtual Nodes), Cassandra users were able to gain a few benefits as a result of streaming when it came to bootstrapping and decommissioning nodes. On the flip side, having to route requests on larger clusters became a lot more intensive of a workload for all nodes that were then forced to act coordinator nodes. By setting up a tier of proxy nodes, we were able to have our cluster of 50 nodes perform with a 300% improvement on average in a mixed workload environment. This is an explanation of what we did, how we did it, and why it works. About the Speaker Eric Lubow CTO, SimpleReach Eric Lubow is CTO of SimpleReach, where he builds highly-scalable distributed systems for processing analytics data. Eric is also a DataStax MVP for Cassandra, and co-author of Practical Cassandra. In his spare time, Eric is a skydiver, motorcycle rider, mixed martial artist, and dog dad.