“Replication of data files, as automatically performed by Distributed File Systems such as HDFS, is known to have a crucial impact on data locality in addition to system fault tolerance. Indeed, intuitively, having more replicas of the same input file gives more opportunities for this task to be processed locally, i.e.without any input file transfer. Given the practical importance of this problem, a vast literature has been proposed to schedule tasks, based on a random placement of replicated input files. Our goal in this study is to evaluate the performance of the default greedy placement algorithm, both in terms of makespan minimization (minimize the completion time of the last task when non-local processing is forbidden) and communication minimization (minimize the number of non-local tasks when no idle time on resources is allowed). In the case of homogenous tasks, we are able to prove, using models based on “balls into bins” and “power of two choices” problems, that the well known good behavior of classical strategies can be theoretically grounded. Going further, we even establish that it is possible, using semi-matchings theory, to find the optimal solution in very small time. We also use known graph-orientation results to prove that this optimal solution is indeed near-perfect with strong probability.”