- R | Minimum number of nodes that must participate in a successful read operation
- W | Minimum number of nodes that must participate in a successful write operation
- N | Number of replicas nodes that retain copies of a system's data (or partition thereof)
How many node failures can the system tolerate while still guaranteeing that read operations will return up-to-date values?
- Given that R is the minimum number of replicas to be read from for a read operation to be successful, it stands that N, where N equals the number of healthy replica nodes, must be at least equal to R for an up-to-date read operation to succeed. Failures can affect up until where the remaining healthy nodes is at least R.