Configuration file for setting datacenters and rack names and using the PropertyFileSnitch.

The location of the file depends on the type of installation:

Package installations
Installer-Services installations


Tarball installations
Installer-No Services installations

The PropertyFileSnitch uses the for datacenters and rack names and to determine network topology so that requests are routed efficiently and allows the database to distribute replicas evenly.


This snitch determines proximity as determined by rack and datacenter. It uses the network details located in the file. When using this snitch, you can define your datacenter names to be whatever you want. Make sure that the datacenter names correlate to the name of your datacenters in the keyspace definition. Every node in the cluster should be described in the file, and this file should be exactly the same on every node in the cluster.

Setting datacenters and rack names

If you had non-uniform IPs and two physical datacenters with two racks in each, and a third logical datacenter for replicating analytics data, the file might look like this:

Note: Datacenter and rack names are case-sensitive.
# datacenter One

# datacenter Two

# Analytics Replication Group

# default for unknown nodes 
default =DC3:RAC1