Quorum Queue Leader Election and Pause Minority Configuration

Raft Consensus and Partition Handling

RabbitMQ Quorum Queues rely on the Raft consensus algorithm to maintain data consistency across a majority of replicas. In a typical 3-node cluster, the system ensures that messages are persisted to a majority of nodes before acknowledging the producer.

When implementing the pause_minority partition handling strategy, the cluster is designed to automatically shut down nodes that find themselves in the minority partition to prevent split-brain scenarios and ensure only one leader is active for a specific queue.

There is uncertainty regarding the precise interaction between the pause_minority mechanism and the Raft leader election timeout during transient network instability. Specifically, it is unclear if a node will trigger a shutdown immediately upon losing quorum or if it waits for the Raft election timer to expire first.

• Does the pause_minority strategy override the standard Raft election timeout?
• What is the expected behavior of a queue leader that is isolated but not yet shut down by the partition handler?