All you need

2N+1 linux machines (virtual?), with N>=1
a command line
a sheet of paper

Install the build system

Apache Cassandra needs a Java sdk installed. The latest supported version is Java 11. I read that upcoming support for latest Java version will be soon here, but we stick to Java 11 that is supported by now.

In order to have Apache Cassandra working on Java 11, it needs to be compiled with it, or you will have to run it with Java 8.

In order to install Java, you might want to do it like this, possibly from a root account:

mkdir -p /opt/java
curl -LO https://download.java.net/openjdk/jdk11/ri/openjdk-11+28_linux-x64_bin.tar.gz

tar vxzf openjdk-11+28_linux-x64_bin.tar.gz
mv jdk-11 /opt/java
cat> /opt/shared/java/load-jdk-11.sh

! /bin/bash

export JAVA_HOME=/opt/java/jdk-11
export PATH=${JAVA_HOME}/bin:${PATH}

The full article: https://kevwe.com/blog/get-your-own-cassandra-cluster