Interview Questions/Troubleshooting Scenarios/Network Partition in Distributed System
AdvancedScenario
15 min

Network Partition in Distributed System

NetworkingDistributed SystemsReliability
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Interview Question

Half your nodes cannot communicate with the other half due to a suspected network partition. How do you investigate and respond?

Key Points to Cover
  • Check cluster health and quorum status
  • Validate network routes, firewalls, and DNS
  • Inspect control plane connectivity
  • Apply safe failover or reroute traffic
  • Perform root cause analysis and long-term fix
Evaluation Rubric
Analyzes cluster quorum health30% weight
Investigates networking/firewalls30% weight
Provides safe mitigation/failover20% weight
Proposes long-term network fixes20% weight
Hints
  • 💡Think CAP theorem trade-offs.
Potential Follow-up Questions
  • How do you design for partition tolerance?
  • What tools detect network splits?
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