How to Choose a Multi-Region Configuration

This page has high-level information about how to configure a multi-region cluster's survival goals and table localities.

Multi-region configuration options

The options for configuring your multi-region cluster include:

• Change nothing: Using the default settings, you get:

  • Zone survival (the default).
  • Low-latency reads and writes from a single region.
  • A choice of low-latency stale reads or high-latency fresh reads from other regions (and high-latency fresh reads is the default).

• Change only survival goals: This configuration is useful for single-region apps that need higher levels of survival. In this configuration, you move from availability zone (AZ) survival to get:

  • Region survival.
  • Low-latency reads from a single region.
  • A choice of low-latency stale reads or high-latency fresh reads from other regions (and high-latency fresh reads is the default).
  • Higher-latency writes from all regions (due to region survival).

• Change only table localities: This is useful for multi-region apps that require different read and write latency guarantees for different tables in the database, and are not concerned with surviving a region failure. In this configuration, you get:

  • Zone survival (the default).
  • For global tables, low-latency reads from all regions.
  • For regional by row tables, low-latency reads and writes from each row's home region, and low-latency follower reads from all other regions.

• Change both survival goals and table localities: This is useful for multi-region apps that want a high level of survival. In this configuration, you move from zone survival and get:

  • Region survival.
  • Low-latency reads from all regions.
  • Higher-latency writes from all regions (due to region survival).

Configuration options vs. performance characteristics and application styles

The following table offers another view of how the various configuration options map to:

• The performance characteristics of specific survival goal and table locality combinations.
• The types of applications that can benefit from each combination.

locality ↓ survival →	ZONE	REGION
REGIONAL BY TABLE	Low-latency for single-region writes and multi-region stale reads.	Single-region writes are higher latency than for ZONE, as at least one additional region must be consulted for each write. Stale multi-region reads are of comparable latency to ZONE survival.
	Single-region apps that can accept region failure.	Single-region apps that must survive region failure.
REGIONAL BY ROW	Low-latency consistent multi-region reads and writes for rows that are homed in specific regions.	Low-latency consistent reads from a row's home region. Low-latency consistent stale reads from outside the row's home region. Higher-latency writes if writing to a row from outside its home region.
	Multi-region apps that read and write individual rows of the table from a specific region and can accept region failure.	Multi-region apps that read and write individual rows of the table from a specific region and must survive a region failure.
GLOBAL	Low-latency multi-region reads. Writes are higher latency than reads.	Low-latency multi-region reads. Writes are higher latency than reads. There should be minimal difference in write latencies between ZONE and REGION survival.
	Multi-region apps that need low-latency reads of a "read-mostly" table.	Multi-region apps that need low-latency reads of a "read-mostly" table and must survive a region failure.

Different databases and tables within the same cluster can each use different combinations of these settings.

See also

• Multi-Region Capabilities Overview
• When to Use REGIONAL vs. GLOBAL Tables
• When to Use ZONE vs. REGION Survival Goals
• Survive Region Outages with CockroachDB
• Topology Patterns
• Disaster Recovery
• Low Latency Reads and Writes in a Multi-Region Cluster