According to the CAP theorem, during a network partition a distributed system must choose between…
Options
- Cost and performance
- Consistency and availability (Correct option)
- Latency and throughput
- Caching and persistence
Answer
Consistency and availability
Why
A network partition is when servers of one system cannot talk to each other (cables, data centers, outages). In real networks this will happen.
During it, a server that receives a request must either refuse to answer until it can confirm the latest data (choose Consistency) or answer with what it has, possibly outdated (choose Availability).
Banks lean to consistency; social feeds lean to availability.
Remember
During a partition: correct-or-nothing (C) vs answer-anyway (A).