Describe a key trade-off between synchronous and asynchronous replication in MIPC?

• A. Asynchronous replication provides lower latency but higher risk of data loss.
• B. Synchronous replication requires no consistency guarantees.
• C. Asynchronous replication provides zero data loss on any failure.
• D. Synchronous replication writes to primary only.

Answer: (A)

The main idea tested is the balance between latency and data durability/consistency when choosing replication mode. In asynchronous replication, the primary can commit a write and return to the client without waiting for replicas, so writes are fast. But because replicas may lag, a failure could cause some recently committed data to be lost, which is the higher risk of data loss. In contrast, synchronous replication waits for replicas to acknowledge the write before the commit is considered complete, which strengthens durability and consistency but adds latency due to the extra network round-trips. So the described trade-off—lower latency with higher risk of data loss—is the core point, making the statement true. The other options misstate important aspects: synchronous replication does not discard consistency guarantees; asynchronous replication does not guarantee zero data loss; and synchronous replication typically involves writing to replicas as part of the commit, not just to the primary.