Impala fault tolerance mechanisms

Learn about the fault tolerance mechanisms in Impala that ensure cluster stability during hardware or process failures.

Fault tolerance allows Impala to continue to operate in the face of hardware or process faults.

Impala uses the StateStored process to provide cluster membership for an Impala cluster. This is one of the core ways Impala provides fault tolerance. The StateStore periodically sends heartbeats (RPCs) to each impalad process. If an impalad stops responding to heartbeats, the StateStored will consider the impalad as failed, and it will remove it from the cluster membership state. The updates to the cluster membership will be broadcasted to all impalads.