There are three configuration files that control server operation:
cluster.xml – This holds the information about all the nodes (i.e. servers) in the cluster, what hostname they are at, the ports they use, etc. It is exactly the same for all voldemort nodes. It does not hold tuning parameters or data directories for those nodes, since that is not information public to the cluster but is specific to that particular nodes configuration.
stores.xml – This holds the information about all the stores (i.e. tables) in the cluster. This includes information about the required number of successful reads to maintain consistency, the required number of writes, as well as how keys and values are serialized into bytes. It is the same on all nodes in the cluster.
server.properties – This contains the tuning parameters that control a particular node. This includes the id of the local node so it knows which entry in cluster.xml corresponds to itself, also the threadpool size, as well as any configuration needed for the local persistence engine such as BDB or mysql. This file is different on each node.
Finally there is an environment variable, VOLDEMORT_HOME, that controls the directory in which data and configuration reside. You can see an example of how the configuration is layed out in the config/ subdirectory of the project. This includes sample configurations that you can modify with your own specifics.