https://community.cloudera.com/t5/Support-Questions/zookeeper-error-Unexpected-exception-causing-shutdown-while/m-p/31226#M53938 You can attempt to increase your jute.maxbuffer Java System Property on the ZK servers to a value higher than 2-3 GB (in bytes) to overcome this. It appears a very large record was somehow placed into your ZK by an application, which appears to have then caused this issue. Wed, 26 Aug 2015 05:50:34 GMT Harsh J 2015-08-26T05:50:34Z