Glossary — in plain language

Replication lag


In plain English

Replication lag is how far behind a replica is compared to the primary — measured in bytes of WAL or in seconds. A little lag is normal; a lot means the replica may return stale data or take longer to take over.

Why it matters

If you read from replicas, lag means users might not see their own recent writes. Monitoring lag and tuning it (or using synchronous replication for critical paths) is a core HA task.

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