title: Backup cassandra keyspace using nodetool
body: <p>I am using Cassandra on Ubuntu 14.04. From the documentation, I could see that running the command:</p>
  
  <pre><code>nodetool snapshot &lt;keyspace name&gt; 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>creates a snapshot of my keyspace. </p>
  
  <p>The output of the command is:</p>
  
  <pre><code>nodetool snapshot my_keyspace                       
  Requested creating snapshot(s) for [my_keyspace] with snapshot name [1455455429118]
  Snapshot directory: 1455455429118
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>As per the docs, the snapshots should be present in the directories:</p>
  
  <pre><code>/var/lib/cassandra/data/my_keyspace/&lt;table names&gt;/snapshots/1455455429118
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>However, there is some hash value at the end of the table name. </p>
  
  <p>I am not sure where that came from and also not sure whether that value will always be same or not. For example, the table name is user_agents, the snapshot directory is:</p>
  
  <pre><code>/var/lib/cassandra/data/my_keyspace/user_agents-147c8cc0d31c11e5aacb3b02dd594b59/snapshots/1455455429118
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I am not sure what <code>147c8cc0d31c11e5aacb3b02dd594b59</code> represents.</p>
  
  <p>I am trying to automate this process and if I don't know about this random hash value, it won't be possible to know which directory to pick. Is there any way to disable this or decipher this from the output of nodetool command ?</p>