I have been reading cassandra for sometime now, just thought of posting my notes that I wrote that helped me to understand the operations page of cassandra wiki (http://wiki.apache.org/cassandra/Operations)
These notes are just a rough cut and if ever I get time will try to make them more legible, just thought of putting them to help others.
Before reading this doc please please please go through http://wiki.apache.org/cassandra/Operations