Aerospike vs. Apache Cassandra: Performance, resilience, and cost-efficiency at scale
Most database benchmarks focus on peak throughput or steady-state latency. But production systems are judged under less favorable conditions as utilization rises, workloads evolve, and failures occur.
This benchANT report compares Aerospike Enterprise 8.0.4 and Apache Cassandra 5.0.3 under two production-relevant scenarios: sustained mixed workload from lightly populated to near capacity, and resilience during node failure. The results show not only a performance difference, but a difference in how predictably each system behaves as conditions change.
Highlights from the report:
3.5× higher average throughput: 481,315 ops/s for Aerospike vs. 138,028 ops/s for Cassandra.
Much less degradation as the cluster filled: Aerospike throughput declined by less than 2%, compared with about 25% for Cassandra.
Tighter tail latency: Aerospike kept p99 latency sub-millisecond for reads, writes, and deletes, while Cassandra operated at materially higher latency with much greater variability.
Stronger behavior during failure: Aerospike remained operational at both 50K and 100K ops/s after node failure, while Cassandra became unstable at 100K ops/s, and the benchmark ended in cascading failure.
Aerospike vs. Apache Cassandra: Performance, resilience, and cost-efficiency at scale
Most database benchmarks focus on peak throughput or steady-state latency. But production systems are judged under less favorable conditions as utilization rises, workloads evolve, and failures occur.
This benchANT report compares Aerospike Enterprise 8.0.4 and Apache Cassandra 5.0.3 under two production-relevant scenarios: sustained mixed workload from lightly populated to near capacity, and resilience during node failure. The results show not only a performance difference, but a difference in how predictably each system behaves as conditions change.
Highlights from the report:
3.5× higher average throughput: 481,315 ops/s for Aerospike vs. 138,028 ops/s for Cassandra.
Much less degradation as the cluster filled: Aerospike throughput declined by less than 2%, compared with about 25% for Cassandra.
Tighter tail latency: Aerospike kept p99 latency sub-millisecond for reads, writes, and deletes, while Cassandra operated at materially higher latency with much greater variability.
Stronger behavior during failure: Aerospike remained operational at both 50K and 100K ops/s after node failure, while Cassandra became unstable at 100K ops/s, and the benchmark ended in cascading failure.
