title: What are best practices for backing up a cassandra cluster?
body: <p>I have a cassandra cluster with ~20 nodes in multiple datacenters. I want to back up the cassandra database. I want it to be possible to restore the backup to a new cluster even if every node in the existing one is simultaneously hit by a meteor.</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>What exactly do I need to copy off of the server(s) and preserve in order to make a from-scratch restore of a cassandra database possible, and where are these items stored? I gather that this is not as simple as "take a snapshot and rsync it somewhere".</li>
  <li>How do I perform the backup and restore?</li>
  <li>Where is this process documented?</li>
  </ol>