Fuzzy row approach is efficient for this kind of requirement and when data is is huge :
As explained by this article
FuzzyRowFilter takes as parameters row key and a mask info. In example above, in case we want to find last logged in users and row key format is userId_actionId_timestamp (where userId has fixed length of say 4 chars), the fuzzy row key we are looking for is “????login”. This translates into the following params for FuzzyRowKey:
FuzzyRowFilter rowFilter = new FuzzyRowFilter(
Arrays.asList(
new Pair<byte[], byte[]>(
Bytes.toBytesBinary("\x00\x00\x00\x00_login_"),
new byte[] {1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0})));