No exception received by application on HDFS restart

["Babu, Suresh" <su...@corp.aol.com>]

Hi,
 
  I have written client application in java, which writes Apache log
data to HDFS Cluster. When the HDFS cluster is brought down, the client
attempts to connect to the Cluster. I have a few issues regarding the
same.
 
1) When the HDFS cluster is brought down, the Application does not get
any exception, instead I see ipc reconnecting messages displayed from
DFS client . Is there a way to get an exception/notice, when the cluster
is down?
 
2) The HDFS DFS client, which is not part of the Application code,
tries to connect to HDFS cluster infinitely. Is there a way to configure
the number of times the client tries to connect?
 
Do we have an application which writes data to HDFS cluster and is
fault-torant? (Handle HDFS cluster shutdown/restart)
 
Thanks
Suresh