What is the recommended minimum number of nodes for a managed cluster to be sufficiently sized?

A managed cluster in Dynatrace is designed to ensure high availability and reliability for the monitoring solution. The recommended minimum of three nodes is important because it allows for a distributed setup that can handle failures more gracefully.

With three nodes, if one node fails, the remaining two can still operate and maintain the health of the cluster. This setup helps in achieving consensus and ensures that the cluster can tolerate one node going down while continuing to function adequately. It also supports better load balancing, as each node can share the workload, enhancing performance and responsiveness.

Moreover, having three nodes allows for effective maintenance without downtime, as one node can be taken offline for updates while the others continue to operate, ensuring that monitoring remains uninterrupted. This design principle aligns with distributed system best practices, where redundancy and fault tolerance are critical for maintaining service continuity.

In contrast, having only one or two nodes poses a risk of total service loss if a node fails, as there would not be enough redundancy to maintain operations or achieve consensus on data handling and processing. Thus, three nodes provide the necessary robustness for a managed cluster in a production environment.