HDFS replication factor

If you set replication to be 1, then the file will be present only on the client node, that is the node from where you are uploading the file.

According to the Hadoop : Definitive Guide

Hadoop’s default strategy is to place the first replica on the same node as the client (for clients running outside the cluster, a node is chosen at random, although the system tries not to pick nodes that are too full or too busy). The second replica is placed on a different rack from the first (off-rack), chosen at random. The third replica is placed on the same rack as the second, but on a different node chosen at random. Further replicas are placed on random nodes on the cluster, although the system tries to avoid placing too many replicas on the same rack.

This logic makes sense as it decreases the network chatter between the different nodes. But, the book was published in 2009 and there had been a lot of changes in the Hadoop framework.

I think it depends on, whether the client is same as a Hadoop node or not. If the client is a Hadoop node then all the splits will be on the same node. This doesn't provide any better read/write throughput in-spite of having multiple nodes in the cluster. If the client is not same as the Hadoop node, then the node is chosen at random for each split, so the splits are spread across the nodes in a cluster. Now, this provides a better read/write throughput.

One advantage of writing to multiple nodes is that even if one of the node goes down, a couple of splits might be down, but at least some data can be recovered somehow from the remaining splits.