title: Cassandra has a limit of 2 billion cells per partition, but what's a partition?
body: <p>In Cassandra Wiki, it is said that there is a limit of <code>2 billion cells (rows x columns)</code> per partition. But it is unclear to me what is a partition?</p>
  
  <p>Do we have one partition per node per column family, which would mean that the max size of a column family would be <code>2 billion cells * number of nodes</code> in the cluster.</p>
  
  <p>Or will Cassandra create as much partitions as required to store all the data of a column family?</p>
  
  <p>I am starting a new project so I will use Cassandra 2.0.</p>