DSE does not start after the DSEFS keyspace is dropped

Summary

This article discusses a scenario that occurs if the DSEFS keyspace is inadvertently dropped.

If a DSEFS keyspace is manually deleted, the keyspace is not automatically recreated by a node restart.

DSE will not start if the DSEFS keyspace was dropped in a datacenter that was removed and then added back to a cluster as a new datacenter.

Use one of these workarounds if you manually deleted the DSEFS keyspace and DSE does not start:

To reuse a DSEFS keyspace that was manually deleted, you must manually create the DSEFS keyspace for the datacenter being added back to the cluster before starting DSE.
To use a new DSEFS keyspace if you manually deleted the DSEFS keyspace named dsefs, define a new DSEFS keyspace name with a different name. For example, if you deleted dsefs in the old datacenter, you can create an empty DSEFS keyspace named dsefs2. Be sure to specify the case-sensitive DSEFS keyspace name in the dse.yaml file.

For example, to create an empty DSEFS keyspace with replication suitable for a development environment:

CREATE KEYSPACE [IF NOT EXISTS] dsefs
  WITH REPLICATION = { 
  'class' : 'SimpleStrategy', 
  'replication_factor' : 1 
};

Do not manually delete the DSEFS keyspace or system keyspaces.
Do not delete the DSEFS keyspace that points to a previously removed datacenter.