Availability vs Consistency
Last updated
What is Availability vs Consistency?
Availability refers to the ability of a system to provide its services to clients even in the presence of failures. This is often measured in terms of the percentage of time that the system is up and running, also known as its uptime.
Consistency, on the other hand, refers to the property that all clients see the same data at the same time. This is important for maintaining the integrity of the data stored in the system.
In distributed systems, it is often a trade-off between availability and consistency. Systems that prioritize high availability may sacrifice consistency, while systems that prioritize consistency may sacrifice availability. Different distributed systems use different approaches to balance the trade-off between availability and consistency, such as using replication or consensus algorithms.
Free resources to learn Availability vs Consistency
- Open sourceCAP FAQ
- ArticleCAP Theorem Revisited
- ArticleA plain english introduction to CAP Theorem
- VideoCAP Theorem
More in stage 4: Availability vs Consistency
Availability vs Consistency: common questions
Can I learn Availability vs Consistency in Hindi?
This lesson is written in English. Once you sign in, open it in the interactive course and ask the AI tutor to explain Availability vs Consistency in Hindi or Hinglish. The tutor answers from this lesson’s own text, so it stays on the syllabus, and it runs on your own Google, OpenAI or Anthropic key.
Is this Availability vs Consistency tutorial for beginners?
It is lesson 6 of 147 in the free System Design roadmap, in stage 4, Availability vs Consistency. If you are new to System Design, start from stage 1 and come back here in order; if you already know the earlier stages, this lesson stands on its own.