One example method includes performing replication operations and/or failure recovery operations for replication operations in a computing system using matrix clocks and replication controllers. The replication controller includes or has access to vectors of a matrix clock. The replication controller also includes a multiplexer. The multiplexer is configured as an m×n multiplexer using the matrix clock to determine m and n. The operation is performed using the configured multiplexer. This allows an imbalance of resources to be managed by the replication controller. The matrix clock can be updated, which may result in the multiplexer being reconfigured.