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From: Misty Stanley-Jones <mstanleyjones@cloudera.com>
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2014 13:26:58 +1000
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Subject: Replication terminology "master-master"
To: dev@hbase.apache.org
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Hi all,

I think "master-master" is a term that should be re-thought. It is not
really a "type" of replication, but refers to a characteristic of  a
cluster, specifically a cluster which participates in multiple clusters
with different roles -- it is a slave in one cluster and a master in
another cluster. I think with the current terminology, people confuse it
with "cyclical" replication, in which two clusters replicate to each other,
and eventually each has all the data from both.

Since master-master in this sense is really not a type of replication, I
think we should just scrap it. You can have master-slave replication or
cyclical replication, or a combination. With master-slave replication, a
cluster can fulfill both roles at the same time, as long as it is in
different clusters. This is easy to understand as a sort of recursive
cascade.

Am I explaining it right, and what do you guys think about changing our
terminology?

Thanks,
Misty

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