What is Split Brain Syndrome?

Definition of Split Brain Syndrome

Split Brain Syndrome in IT terms, is a terminology that refers to a state where a group of interconnected resources divides into individual resources and each resource considers that all of the other resources are dead.

Explanation

State of Split Brain Syndrome occurs in a clustering environment where multiple interconnected clusters or resources like servers are connected to some single node. At some point, if these clusters get disconnected with each other but still connected to the node then each cluster will consider that it is the only cluster alive in the whole network. This specific state is known as Split Brain Syndrome. Split Brain Syndrome can result in data corruption as multiple clusters can request the same data file and can perform some operation on the data file which might result in some data loss or data corruption. On the other hand, Split-Brain Syndrome can also result in a deadlock state because multiple clusters can request for the same application and one cluster can acquire one resource for as long as it wants considering the fact that all other clusters are dead so there is no need to free a specific resource within a network.