Arbitration techniques in distributed computing systems are disclosed herein. In one embodiment, a method includes receiving an arbitration request from a first node in the computing system. The first arbitration request indicating that a one-way lease between the first node and a second node in the computing system has failed. The method also includes in response to receiving the arbitration request from the first node, providing an arbitration result to the first node, the arbitration result allowing both the first and second nodes to continue to operate despite of that the one-way lease between the first and second nodes has failed.