A live non-volatile (NV) replay technique enables a partner node to efficiently takeover a failed node of a high-availability pair in a multi-node storage cluster by dynamically replaying operations synchronously logged in a non-volatile random access memory (NVRAM) of the partner node, while also providing high performance during normal operation. Dynamic live replay may be effected through interpretation of metadata describing the logged operations. The metadata may specify a location and type of each logged operation within a partner portion of the NVRAM, as well as any dependency among the logged operation and any other logged operations that would impose an ordering constraint. During normal operation, the partner node may consult the metadata to identify dependent logged operations and dynamically replay those operations to satisfy one or more requests. Upon failure of the node, the partner node may replay, in parallel, those logged operations having no imposed ordering constraint, thereby reducing time needed to complete takeover of the failed node.