Cassandra keyspace for counters

Question

I am trying to create a table for keeping counters to different hits on my APIs. I am using Cassandra 2.0.6, and aware that there have been some performance improvements to counters starting 2.1.0, but cant upgrade at this moment.
The documentation i read on datastax always starts with creating a separate keyspace like these: http://www.datastax.com/documentation/cql/3.0/cql/cql_using/use_counter_t.html http://www.datastax.com/documentation/cql/3.1/cql/cql_using/use_counter_t.html

From documentation:

Create a keyspace on Linux for use in a single data center, single node cluster. Use the default data center name from the output of the nodetool status command, for example datacenter1.
CREATE KEYSPACE counterks WITH REPLICATION = { 'class' : 'NetworkTopologyStrategy', 'datacenter1' : 1 };

Question:
1)Does it mean that i should keep my counters in a separate keyspace
2)If yes, should i declare the keyspace as defined in documentation examples, or thats just an example and i can set my own replication strategy - specifically replicate across data centers.

Thanks

Answer 1

Sorry you had trouble with the instructions. The instructions need to be changed to make it clear that this is just an example and improved by changing RF to 3, for example.

Using a keyspace for a single data center and single node cluster is not a requirement. You need to keep counters in separate tables, but not separate keyspaces; however, keeping tables in separate keyspaces gives you the flexibility to change the consistency and replication from table to table. Normally you have one keyspace per application. See related single vs mutliple keyspace discussion on http://grokbase.com/t/cassandra/user/145bwd3va8/effect-of-number-of-keyspaces-on-write-throughput.