SPOF 0: Why Every Node in a Cassandra Cluster is the Same

In a distributed system, component failures are common, especially as infrastructure grows. Some systems marketed as distributed still have single points of failure due to master-slave replication or mixed-master failover schemes, which limit scalability and increase hardware interconnection complexity. Cassandra is a horizontally scalable distributed database designed with all nodes serving the same role - that of a primary replica for a portion of the data. This design allows for improved reliability and scalability by eliminating single points of failure. When a node goes down, other nodes containing copies of the data continue to service read requests and accept writes for the down node. New nodes can be added seamlessly, taking over portions of data from existing nodes. Cassandra's streamlined design simplifies management, reliability, and scalability by having all nodes share the same role and requirements.