From 7c7a70202b9f36e08189e909c07b932d77d3d4cd Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Rob Szumski Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 16:15:59 -0400 Subject: [PATCH] docs: clarify tuning timeouts --- Documentation/tuning.md | 2 ++ 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+) diff --git a/Documentation/tuning.md b/Documentation/tuning.md index 8d518c8cc..c9899a525 100644 --- a/Documentation/tuning.md +++ b/Documentation/tuning.md @@ -3,6 +3,8 @@ The default settings in etcd should work well for installations on a local network where the average network latency is low. However, when using etcd across multiple data centers or over networks with high latency you may need to tweak the heartbeat interval and election timeout settings. +The network isn't the only source of latency. Each request and response may be impacted by slow disks on both the leader and follower. Each of these timeouts represents the total time from request to successful response from the other machine. + ### Time Parameters The underlying distributed consensus protocol relies on two separate time parameters to ensure that nodes can handoff leadership if one stalls or goes offline.