A method and system for processing a transaction request in a distributed data handling architecture. Responsive to receiving a transaction request at a master transaction server, a transaction identifier that identifies a data operation specified by the received transaction request is recorded within a local memory of a replica server. Data operation results are committed master transaction server memory and responsive to committing the data within the master transaction server memory, a post commit signal is sent to the replica server. Data operation results are also committed within local memory of the replica server, and responsive to a failover condition that prevents the master transaction server from sending the post commit signal, the recorded transaction identifier is utilized to synchronize data stored locally within the replica server with data stored within a persistent backend data store shared by the master transaction server and the replica server.