Leader Election

Kind: mechanism

Layer: Execution Core

Record: architecture:leader-election

Severity: contextual

Scope: distributed system, coordination, availability

Canonical: Ontology

A mechanism that lets a group of nodes agree on one coordinator and replace it when it fails.

Listed in Architecture principles, after Decentralization and before Consensus.

Requires

• Consensus

Reinforces

• Control Plane
• Fault Tolerance

Enables

• Single-Writer Coordination
• Automatic Failover of Leadership

Conflicts with

• Split-Brain Coordination

In tension with

• Availability

Tensions

• Leader Election / Availability

Violated by

• Split-Brain Coordination

Severity

• contextual

Category

• Control / Coordination / Centralization

Linked from

• Control / Coordination / Centralization
• Error Handling / Resilience
• Control / Coordination / Centralization
• Quality Attributes
• Severity levels
• The resolutions