In https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HDFS-1972 jira, there is one below case: Scenario 3: DN restarts during split brain period
(this scenario illustrates why I think we need to persistently record the promise about who is active) - block has 2 replicas, user asks to reduce to 1 - NN1 adds the block to DN1's invalidation queue, but it's backed up behind a bunch of other commands, so doesn't get issued yet. - Failover occurs, but NN1 still thinks it's active. - DN1 promises to NN2 not to accept commands from NN1. It sends an empty deletion report to NN2. Then, it crashes. - NN2 has received a deletion report from everyone, and asks DN2 to delete the block. It hasn't realized that DN1 is crashed yet. - DN2 deletes the block. - DN1 starts back up. When it comes back up, it talks to NN1 first (maybe it takes a while to connect to NN2 for some reason) - ** Now, if we had saved the "promise" as part of persistent state, we could ignore NN1 and avoid this issue. Otherwise: - NN1 still thinks it's active, and sends a command to DN1 to delete the block. DN1 does so. - We lost the bloc I am use the CDH4.3.1 version, and am reading the DataNode code. I don't find the DataNode to save the "promise" as part of persistent state. I want to know whether the case 3 is handled in CDH4.3.1 version. If the case is hadnled, where is the code? Thanks, LiuLe