dependency on cassandra

[joeblew99]

Could it makes sense to use etc or consul for this ?

It makes deployment etc easier with a 100% golang stack.

[thuningxu]

Thanks for the suggestion. Right now running metadata on etcd/Consul/zookeeper isn't on our priority list. That said, we have designed metadata access layer behind a Thrift interface, so that it is not cumbersome to support different distributed database. We welcome community contribution to make this happen!

[mfateev]

One of the main reasons for using Cassandra was to stay available during network partitions. Any metadata solution that requires quorum to operate is going to have lower availability. I still think it would be useful to support alternative metadata implementations, but I'm not sure how many users would prefer easier deployment over higher availability.

[carr123]

I think it's better to remove external dependence, easier deployment is welcomed.