Question

A cloud provider is designing the storage backend for a new high-performance block storage service. The architecture team is debating between a tightly coupled and a loosely coupled storage cluster design. Management requires the design to deliver the highest performance and strongest data consistency for latency-sensitive database workloads, even if this constrains how large the cluster can grow. Which storage cluster architecture best meets these requirements, and what is the primary trade-off the team must accept?

Accepted Answer

A tightly coupled cluster, accepting limited scalability because nodes share a proprietary high-speed interconnect and centralized components

Answer

A loosely coupled cluster, accepting weaker performance because nodes communicate over standard networks with independent metadata

Answer

A tightly coupled cluster, accepting eventual consistency because data is asynchronously replicated across geographically dispersed nodes

Answer

A loosely coupled cluster, accepting higher latency because it enforces synchronous replication across all commodity nodes