You could make a column family for each period of time and then drop the column family when you want to destroy it. Before you drop it you could use the sstabletojson converter and write the json files out to tape.
Might make your life difficult however if you need an input split for map reduce between each time period because you would be limited to working on one column family at a time. On Dec 18, 2012, at 8:09 AM, "stephen.m.thomp...@wellsfargo.com<mailto:stephen.m.thomp...@wellsfargo.com>" <stephen.m.thomp...@wellsfargo.com<mailto:stephen.m.thomp...@wellsfargo.com>> wrote: Hi folks. Still working through the details of building out a Cassandra solution and I have an interesting requirement that I’m not sure how to implement in Cassandra: In our current Oracle world, we have the data for this system partitioned by month, and each month the data that are now 18-months old are archived to tape/cold storage and then the partition for that month is dropped. Is there a way to do something similar with Cassandra without destroying our overall performance? Thanks in advance, Steve Join Barracuda Networks in the fight against hunger. To learn how you can help in your community, please visit: http://on.fb.me/UAdL4f