Methods, systems and computer program products for computer system data management. A leader node that is in a leader-follower relationship with a follower node is deployed to manage metadata across a plurality of interconnected computing nodes of the computer system. Upon a failure of any sort that results in a loss of operation or a disconnection of the leader node, the followers undertake steps to bring up a new leader. Such steps to bring up a new leader include electing a new leader to replace the lost or disconnected leader and initializing the data state of the new leader node by causing the leader to request incremental snapshots from followers. Additional metadata that might have changed since closing the incremental snapshots can also be retrieved from the followers. The metadata that might have changed since the time of closing the incremental snapshot is subjected to verification using a consensus algorithm.