Section 3.10 of the PhD describes two cases for which the extension can
be helpful:
1. Sometimes the leader must step down. For example, it may need to reboot
for maintenance, or it may be removed from the cluster. When it steps
down, the cluster will be idle for an election timeout until another
server times out and wins an election. This brief unavailability can be
avoided by having the leader transfer its leadership to another server
before it steps down.
2. In some cases, one or more servers may be more suitable to lead the
cluster than others. For example, a server with high load would not make
a good leader, or in a WAN deployment, servers in a primary datacenter
may be preferred in order to minimize the latency between clients and
the leader. Other consensus algorithms may be able to accommodate these
preferences during leader election, but Raft needs a server with a
sufficiently up-to-date log to become leader, which might not be the
most preferred one. Instead, a leader in Raft can periodically check
to see whether one of its available followers would be more suitable,
and if so, transfer its leadership to that server. (If only human leaders
were so graceful.)
The patch here implements the extension and employs it automatically
when a leader removes itself from a cluster.
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