1. A method comprising: starting a survivor process associated with a storage cluster application; detecting a crash of the storage cluster application; and performing a smooth restart of the storage cluster application after the crash according to a new storage cluster application configured to replace the storage cluster application by managing open handles associated with the storage cluster application, wherein performing a smooth restart of the storage cluster application after the crash comprises: recovering context data associated with the storage cluster application; determining consistency of the recovered context data; recovering open handles associated with the storage cluster application from the associated survivor process; and replaying any commands that were not complete, based upon the recovered open handles when the crash was detected to the storage cluster application.