MongoDB ReplicaSet - PRIMARY role falls to SECONDARY when only PRIMARY is left

Question

I am investigating using MongoDB ReplicaSet for high availability.

But just discovered that in ReplicaSet with 3 nodes, if PRIMARY mongod is the only one left (that is 2 other mongod instances died or were shut down), then after several seconds it switches role to SECONDARY and accepts writes no more. That makes Replica Set worth less than single instance.

I know & understand about PRIMARY election, but the PRIMARY role is fixed to a server (by using priority set to ,say, 10) and (for example due to network problems) other servers become inaccessible, why the main server just gives up?!

Tested with 2.4.8 on Windows (mongodb-win32-x86_64-2008plus-2.4.8) and Linux (CentOS) and 2.0.x on Linux

BOUNTY STARTED:

If the replica set gives up when PRIMARY feels alone, what are alternative to ensure 100% availability? Or maybe there is special configuration needed for the case. The current implementation makes ReplicaSet fragile in case of network problems.

UPDATED:

Alas, I have not said before the scenario when #3 goes down (PRIMARY & SECONDARY are left) and then after a while SECONDARY goes down. Then PRIMARY really just "gives up", because it is already known that #3 is unavailable for some time. This was actually tested in my test environment.

var rsconfig = {"_id":"rs4","members":[{"_id":0,"host":"localhost:27041","priority":10},{"_id":1,"host":"localhost:27042"},{"_id":2,"host":"localhost:27043","arbiterOnly":true}]}
printjson(rsconfig)
rs.initiate(rsconfig)

We initially thought to put SECONDARY and #3 (that is ARBITER) on the same server, but because of question in title, we cannot use such configuration.

Thanks to Alan Spencer for first explaining the logic that MongoDB takes.

Answer 1

This is expected, since the majority of the members are down MongoDB does not assume the last remaining member is consistent.

When you have a majority of the members down there are a couple of options: http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/tutorial/reconfigure-replica-set-with-unavailable-members/