Availability guarantees which of the following?

Availability guarantees which of the following?

• A. All data fully up-to-date.
• B. Queries are always slow.
• C. Every non-failing node responds, possibly with stale data.
• D. No partition tolerance.

Answer: (C)

Availability is about the system continuing to respond to requests even when parts of the system fail or the network is partitioned. In practice, this means that every non-failing node will respond, but the data it returns may be stale or inconsistent with other replicas because updates haven’t fully propagated yet. It does not guarantee that data on all nodes is fully up-to-date, and it doesn’t promise that every query will be fast or slow—just that there will be a response. The notion that there is no partition tolerance isn’t aligned with how distributed systems operate under failure; availability specifically addresses remaining responsive in the face of partitions. So the best statement is that every non-failing node responds, possibly with stale data.

Availability is about the system continuing to respond to requests even when parts of the system fail or the network is partitioned. In practice, this means that every non-failing node will respond, but the data it returns may be stale or inconsistent with other replicas because updates haven’t fully propagated yet. It does not guarantee that data on all nodes is fully up-to-date, and it doesn’t promise that every query will be fast or slow—just that there will be a response. The notion that there is no partition tolerance isn’t aligned with how distributed systems operate under failure; availability specifically addresses remaining responsive in the face of partitions. So the best statement is that every non-failing node responds, possibly with stale data.