Hashicorp Raft consensus deadlock state

Question

I am implementing a Raft service using Hashicorp Raft library for distributed consensus. https://github.com/hashicorp/raft

I have a simple layout with Raft, 1 followers and a leader. I bootstrap the cluster with the leader and add 2 follower Raft nodes to the Raft cluster, things look fine. When I knock one of the followers offline, the leader gets:

failed to contact quorum of nodes, stepping down. The problem with this is now there are 0 nodes in leader state and no one can promote to leader because majority of votes required from quorum of nodes. Now because the previous leader is now a follower, even my service discovery tools can't remove the old ip address from the leader because it requires leader power to do so.

My cluster enters this infinite loop (deadlock) of trying to connect to a node that's offline forever and no one can get promoted to leader. Any ideas?

Edit: After realizing, I guess I need a system where there are an odd number of nodes to reach quorum. (ie 3 nodes, 1 gets knocked offline then I can tell the new leader to remove old IP address)

Answer 1

I don't have experience with that library, but:

"The problem with this is now there are 0 nodes in leader state and no one can promote to leader because majority of votes required from quorum of nodes".

With one of three nodes out, you still have quorum/majority. Raft would promote one of followers to leader.

The fact that your system stalled after you removed one of two followers tells me that one of followers was not added correctly in the first place.

You had one leader and one follower initially. Since that was working, it means that follower and the leader can communicate; all good here.

You have added second follower; how do you know that it was done correctly? Can you try to do it again, and knock out this second follower - the system should keep working as the leader and the first follower are ok.

So I can conclude, that the second follower did not join the cluster, and when you knocked out the first follower, the systems stopped, as it should - no more majority of correctly configured nodes are available.