Cassandra is optimized for write heavy workloads, inverse to MySQL. It also effortlessly scales horizontally and is designed to do so. The use case is clear and

Cassandra is optimized for write heavy workloads, inverse to MySQL. It also effortlessly scales horizontally and is designed to do so. The use case is clear and definitely different than that of MySQL. As for the second point, you can store the JSON data in a Redis "hash" datatype: https://matt.sh/introduction-to-redis-data-types https://matt.sh/introduction-to-redis-data-types Although MySQL also supports in-memory KV storage with (nearly?) constant time lookups (http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/innodb-adaptive-hash.html http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/innodb-adaptive-hash....), I think Redis is a bit easier to partition.