---
title: Sharing all nodes
description: The default directed clustering is the simplest deployment case, where all nodes are shared within a cluster.
component: pingfederate
version: 13.1
page_id: pingfederate:server_clustering_guide:pf_sharing_nodes
canonical_url: https://docs.pingidentity.com/pingfederate/13.1/server_clustering_guide/pf_sharing_nodes.html
llms_txt: https://docs.pingidentity.com/pingfederate/llms.txt
docs_for_agents: https://developer.pingidentity.com/build-with-ai/docs-for-agents.md
revdate: July 5, 2022
---

# Sharing all nodes

The default directed clustering is the simplest deployment case, where all nodes are shared within a cluster.

Leaving the `preferred.node.indices` property blank in all cluster-configuration files results in a basic deployment case. An advantage of this approach is simplicity, including the option of using straightforward load-balancing strategies such as round robin. A disadvantage is that as additional nodes are added, the throughput improvement rate that clustering offers may decline as the state-replication overhead increases.

The following diagram illustrates this node-sharing approach. Requests in this deployment are directed to all nodes.![Runtime state management architecture - Sharing all nodes](_images/fba1611010227823.png)