The disclosure is directed to data replication in a distributed computing system. The data, e.g., received from a client, is replicated to a first set of servers (“sync replica set”) synchronously and to a second set of servers asynchronously (“async tree”). A server can be a primary, secondary or a follower server. A sync replica set includes a primary server and one or more secondary servers. The async tree includes multiple follower servers deployed in a tree structure. A primary server can replicate the data to the secondary servers synchronously, and the secondary servers can replicate the data to one or more follower servers, e.g., a root node of the async tree, asynchronously. The root node then replicates the data to children of the root node, which then replicate to their children and so on until the leaf nodes of the async tree receive the data.