> 
> The fact that it requires discarding and
> reinitializing the failed node
> makes FAILOVER a pretty undesirable operation.

I have heard this mentioned a few times now, and I
have always wondered about it...

While replication has many uses such as back-up and
disaster recover, failover is IMHO also a legitimate
use. Nobody wants it to have happen, of course, but it
will and does. In fact, I consider failover as part of
disaster recovery.

So what does "undesirable operation" actually mean?

Ujwal