Definition
In RAG and AI agent architectures, availability refers to the system's resilience and capacity to serve inference or retrieval requests despite component failures, often achieved through LLM provider redundancy and distributed vector database replication.
In RAG, availability is distinct from accuracy; a system can be 'available' to give a response while its underlying 'consistency' (data freshness) is lagging.
"A 24/7 drive-thru with multiple service windows; if one window's computer crashes, the others continue taking orders to prevent a total shutdown."
- CAP Theorem(Prerequisite (The foundational logic dictating the trade-off between Consistency, Availability, and Partition Tolerance in vector stores))
- Eventual Consistency(Trade-off (The state where higher availability is prioritized over immediate data synchronization across all vector nodes))
- Fallback Mechanism(Component (The architectural strategy of routing requests to a secondary LLM or region when the primary is unavailable))
Conceptual Overview
In RAG and AI agent architectures, availability refers to the system's resilience and capacity to serve inference or retrieval requests despite component failures, often achieved through LLM provider redundancy and distributed vector database replication.
Disambiguation
In RAG, availability is distinct from accuracy; a system can be 'available' to give a response while its underlying 'consistency' (data freshness) is lagging.
Visual Analog
A 24/7 drive-thru with multiple service windows; if one window's computer crashes, the others continue taking orders to prevent a total shutdown.