failure-detector · shipping · also distributed failure detector

Failure detector

A failure detector is a component that uses observations to report whether another process or endpoint is suspected of being unavailable.

A suspicion can be mistaken and is not the same as resource fencing. The interpretation belongs to a particular observer and monitoring path. [2]

Cassandra's documented UP/DOWN decisions are local; convicting an endpoint changes routing rather than automatically removing it from membership. Heartbeat observations alone do not establish application progress or durable write completion. [1]

Relations

related
phi-accrual-detector, gray-failure, io-fencing, io-timeout

Citations

  1. Apache Cassandra documentation: Dynamo, Ring Membership and Failure Detection (reviewed 17 October 2026). (accessed 2026-10-17)
  2. Phi failure detectors: suspicion is not a failure probability (accessed 2026-10-17)

JSON: /data/terms/failure-detector.json