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Advanced8 min

Network Partition (Split-Brain Simulation)

Simulate a network partition where a broker is alive but network-isolated, creating a split-brain window.

A network partition is different from a broker crash. The broker process is alive and believes it's still the leader, but other brokers can't reach it. This creates a dangerous window where two brokers may believe they're the leader for the same partition.

The steps below reference the interactive simulator, which is being migrated into /simulate next — until it lands, treat this as the written runbook for the exercise.

Steps

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Verification

After recovery: B3 is the new Controller. B2 is a healthy follower. No data loss because acks=all writes were protected by the remaining ISR members.

The interview angle

Network partitions are harder than crashes. Key protection: acks=all + minISR=2 means writes require ISR quorum acknowledgement, preventing split-brain data corruption.