The cassandra-topology.properties file is used with the PropertyFileSnitch. It is also used as a backup to GossipingPropertyFileSnitch. It contains a hard-coded list of every node in the cluster, including its IP address, data center, and rack definition.
For example:
# datacenter US Central 10.9.9.12=US-Central:central_13 10.9.19.22=US-Central:central_16 10.9.29.32=US-Central:central_19 # datacenter US West 10.4.4.16=US-West:west_14 10.4.14.26=US-West:west_2 10.4.24.36=US-West:west_27
Whenever a new node is added, it must be added to this file on every single node. In larger environments, this quickly becomes untenable. It can be especially tedious when employed in a frequently-scaling cloud environment.
While ...
