to clarify, Cassandra is still faster on a per-node basis than relational databases on EC2, but if you compare EC2 numbers with real hardware and wonder "why is

to clarify, Cassandra is still faster on a per-node basis than relational databases on EC2, but if you compare EC2 numbers with real hardware and wonder "why is it so slow?" that is why. :) that said, there was a thread yesterday about Joe Stump's benchmarks showing EC2 I/O not being as bad as most people think so possibly they have made some improvements since. As j3fft mentions, Joe Stump is also in TFA talking about using Cassandra.