How to solve ConfigurationException: Missing required directive CommitLogSync while configuring a multi node Cassandra cluster on Centos7

Aim: to configure a multi node Cassandra cluster on Centos7

Method

This documentation is used to configure a multi node Cassandra cluster.

[user@cassandra01 ~]$ cat /etc/cassandra/conf/cassandra.yaml
cluster_name: 'MyCassandraCluster'
num_tokens: 256
seed_provider:
  - class_name: org.apache.cassandra.locator.SimpleSeedProvider
    parameters:
      - seeds: "<ipaddress_cassandra01>,<ipaddress_cassandra02>"
listen_address:
rpc_address: 0.0.0.0
endpoint_snitch: GossipingPropertyFileSnitch

Problem

When the first Cassandra node has been started by issuing:

sudo systemctl start cassandra

the node does not seem to start and the /var/log/cassandra/cassandra.log indicates that:

 INFO 12:56:38,057 Loading settings from file:/etc/cassandra/default.conf/cassandra.yaml
 INFO 12:56:40,073 Data files directories: null
 INFO 12:56:40,089 Commit log directory: null
ERROR 12:56:40,097 Fatal configuration error
org.apache.cassandra.exceptions.ConfigurationException: Missing required directive CommitLogSync
        at org.apache.cassandra.config.DatabaseDescriptor.applyConfig(DatabaseDescriptor.java:148)
        at org.apache.cassandra.config.DatabaseDescriptor.<clinit>(DatabaseDescriptor.java:112)
        at org.apache.cassandra.service.CassandraDaemon.setup(CassandraDaemon.java:213)
        at org.apache.cassandra.service.CassandraDaemon.activate(CassandraDaemon.java:554)
        at org.apache.cassandra.service.CassandraDaemon.main(CassandraDaemon.java:643)
Missing required directive CommitLogSync
Fatal configuration error; unable to start. See log for stacktrace.

Attempt to solve the issue

According the error message it looks like that there is a configuration issue or certain directories do not exist.

1) Missing required directive CommitLogSync:

According this documentation there is a default commitlog_sync, i.e.:

commitlog_sync
(Default: periodic ) The method that Cassandra uses to acknowledge writes in milliseconds:

    periodic : Used with commitlog_sync_period_in_ms (Default: 10000 - 10 seconds ) to control how often the commit log is

synchronized to disk. Periodic syncs are acknowledged immediately.
batch : Used with commitlog_sync_batch_window_in_ms (Default: disabled **) to control how long Cassandra waits for other writes
before performing a sync. When using this method, writes are not
acknowledged until fsynced to disk.

2) Data files directories: null:

data_file_directories
(Default: /var/lib/cassandra/data ) The directory location where table data (SSTables) is stored.

Issuing ls /var/lib/cassandra/data returns a 0 and indicates that the directory exists.

3) Commit log directory: null:

commitlog_directory
(Default: /var/lib/cassandra/commitlog ) The directory where the commit log is stored. For optimal write performance, it is recommended
the commit log be on a separate disk partition (ideally, a separate
physical device) from the data file directories.

Confirmed that the /var/lib/cassandra/commitlog directory exists as well.

Question

What is causing this issue and how to solve it?