[infinispan-dev] Distributed hashing - heterogenous nodes

[Manik Surtani]

This is based on a question that came up when discussing Infinispan  
with the Red Hat MRG group.  My current design treats nodes as equal,  
and as such would get an equal number of keys mapped to the node.

This is not always desirable, since nodes aren't always equal.  Nodes  
could be weighted.  Inspired by Amazon's Dynamo paper [1], I'm  
considering providing an alternate ConsistentHash implementation that  
supports weights, with the use of "virtual nodes", or "tokens".

I suppose the purpose of this email is, do we need a "simplistic" CH  
implementation like the one I have right now, anymore?  Should we not  
just ship a weighted CH, with the default weight being equal?

Cheers
Manik

[1] http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2007/10/amazons_dynamo.html

--
Manik Surtani
manik at jboss.org
Lead, Infinispan
Lead, JBoss Cache
http://www.infinispan.org
http://www.jbosscache.org