3 ms·

> Choosing (C) only requires stopping the machines that got disconnected, not the whole system! This post is generally good but I take exception to that statem

> Choosing (C) only requires stopping the machines that got disconnected, not the whole system! This post is generally good but I take exception to that statement. Partitions can occur between nodes. If nodes A and B are partitioned from nodes C, D, and E, but they all still receive requests, it's not clear which machines have been "disconnected." Generally you use a quorum of greater than 50% of nodes to decide which nodes should die. It's a more complicated picture than whether the network interface is up or down on the server.

Dave_Rosenthal 12y ago
Totally agreed that I glossed over how you actually resolve the split-brain scenario and that it's not just about the network interface being up. There are a lot of options for how to deal with the issue. For example, in FoundationDB, a server needs to be able to talk to a majority of user-designated "coordinator" nodes that are running PAXOS to be a part of the cluster.