In the Openshift environment, the number of pods is scaling up and down, and having a fixed number of site master (max_site_master) may not be the best approach.

I want to propose a site_master_ratio which updates the max_site_master every time a view change happen. The possible value would be between 0 (exclusive) and 1 (inclusive) and it means the ratio of nodes in the view that are "promoted" to site master nodes.

I think it could be as simple as:

public void handleView(View view) {
    max_site_master = Math.max(max_site_master, site_master_ratio * view.size())

    members=view.getMembers(); // First, save the members for routing received messages to local members
    List<Address> old_site_masters=site_masters;
    List<Address> new_site_masters=determineSiteMasters(view);
    ...
}

WDYT? Does it make sense?