The heart of DSROMS is the Consensus Ring. This is a dynamic grouping of nodes responsible for the active management of "hot" data. DSROMS utilizes a modified Raft consensus algorithm, here referred to as . Unlike standard Raft, which can stall during leader election, Raft-RT allows for "pre-vote" buffering, ensuring that client I/O operations are buffered in non-volatile memory during leadership transitions, thereby eliminating downtime during node failure.