Does anyone know how cassandra chooses the nodes for its other replicant copies?
The first node gets the first copy because its token is assigned for that key. But what about the other copies of the data? Do the replicant nodes stay the same based on the token range? Or are the other copies send to any random node based on its load and availability? I think this is important in order to understand because it affects how to plan for situations where a significant number of nodes are suddenly unavailable, such as the loss of a data center. If the replicants are copied just based on random availability, then quorum writes could survive on the remaining nodes. But if the replicant nodes are somehow pre-determined, those replicants may node be available and writes will fail.
