An approach for managing state information by a group of servers that services a group of clients is disclosed. One server is designated as the primary server and is responsible for generating state information to be used by both the servers and the clients. The remaining servers are designated as secondary servers that help to manage the group, but which do not generate the state information. When the primary server fails or is not available due to a network partition event, one of the secondary servers changes role to become the primary server. With a network partition event, each partition can have a primary server, and when the network partition heals, one of the primary servers changes role back to being a secondary server. As a result, the group of servers maintains a consistent set of state information without being vulnerable to the single failure of a server.