Hello, adding to this: the hbase regionserver does not survive either when it runs into that situation! When putting a node into "decomissioning", if a regionserver has a file open on that node, it dies:
2015-01-28 10:11:18,178 FATAL [regionserver60020.logRoller] regionserver.HRegionServer: ABORTING region server xxxxx.cern.ch,60020,1422371469606: Failed log close in log roller org.apache.hadoop.hbase.regionserver.wal.FailedLogCloseException: #1422436277964 at org.apache.hadoop.hbase.regionserver.wal.FSHLog.cleanupCurrentWriter(FSHLog.java:787) at org.apache.hadoop.hbase.regionserver.wal.FSHLog.rollWriter(FSHLog.java:575) at org.apache.hadoop.hbase.regionserver.LogRoller.run(LogRoller.java:97) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745) Caused by: org.apache.hadoop.ipc.RemoteException(java.io.IOException): File /hbase/WALs/xxxxx.cern.ch,60020,1422371469606/xxxxx.cern.ch%2C60020%2C1422371469606.1422436277964 could only be replicated to 0 nodes instead of minRepl ication (=1). There are 17 datanode(s) running and 17 node(s) are excluded in this operation. at org.apache.hadoop.hdfs.server.blockmanagement.BlockManager.chooseTarget(BlockManager.java:1492) at org.apache.hadoop.hdfs.server.namenode.FSNamesystem.getAdditionalBlock(FSNamesystem.java:3027) at org.apache.hadoop.hdfs.server.namenode.NameNodeRpcServer.addBlock(NameNodeRpcServer.java:614) at org.apache.hadoop.hdfs.server.namenode.AuthorizationProviderProxyClientProtocol.addBlock(AuthorizationProviderProxyClientProtocol.java:188) at org.apache.hadoop.hdfs.protocolPB.ClientNamenodeProtocolServerSideTranslatorPB.addBlock(ClientNamenodeProtocolServerSideTranslatorPB.java:476) ....