Cleanup cassandra tables one by one, starting with the smallest

cleanup_tables.sh

#!/bin/bash
# This will work in case you have very limited disk space, it will also show more digestable progress compared to nodetool compactionstats
DATA_FOLDER="/var/lib/cassandra/data"
CMD="cleanup"
cd $DATA_FOLDER

# list keyspaces from small to large
KEYSPACES=`du -s * | sort -n | awk '{print $2}'`

# iterate keyspaes
for KS in $KEYSPACES; do
	echo "Starting with $KS"
	cd $KS

	# list tables
	TABLES=`du -s * | sort -n | awk '{print $2}'`

	# iterate tables
	for TABLE in $TABLES; do 
		echo "  Processing $TABLE"
		nodetool $CMD $KS $TABLE
	done

	# back
	cd ..
done