Confused regarding RF-2 and RF-3, and which one is suitable for your cluster?

If you have a 3 node cluster and your data resiliency is okay, you can handle a failure of 1 node, this is termed as FT-1 (Fault Tolerance), or alternatively RF-2.

RF-2 is Redundancy Factor - 2, which states that all data in your NX environment has another copy distributed in your cluster, which makes it possible for the cluster to sustain a single component failure and is the default fault tolerance configuration for your cluster.

What if you're handling a larger cluster and your workload is extremely critical?

Redundancy factor 3 is a configurable option that allows a Nutanix cluster to withstand the simultaneous failure of two components by saving 2 copies of all your data in two different nodes in your NX environment.

The requirements for RF-3 are as follows- Minimum number of Nodes in your environment should be 5 and the storage containers should be RF-3.
Want to know more about how RF-3 works? Redundancy Factor 3

So what if you created a storage container with RF-2 and now want to change it to RF-3, is there a way to achieve this?

Definitely yes.

SSH to any CVM in the cluster with the username nutanix

• 1-Get the list of container from the command

$ ncli ctr ls

• 2-Change the container from RF2 to RF3.Replace container_ID with the value from step 1

$ncli ctr edit rf=3 id=container_ID


Interested in knowing more ?

Check out how to increase the cluster fault tolerance level - Increase Cluster Fault Tolerance


Want to know more about data resiliency in a Nutanix Environment?
Read the Data Path Resiliency Section in Nutanix Bible - Nutanix Bible