What is the meaning of eventual consistency in Cassandra when nodes in a single cluster do not contain the copies of same data but data is distributed among nodes. Now since a single peice of data is recorded at a single place (node). Why wouldn't Cassandra return the recent value from that single place of record? How do multiple copies arise in this situation?
Its up to the client to decide the appropriate consistency level (zero, any, one, quoram or all). (The consistency level controls both read and write behavior based on your replicationfactor.) In a single node cluster the consistency levels any, one, quorom and all are equivalent.