Distributed Systems - Complete Guide

This comprehensive guide covers distributed systems, from fundamental concepts to advanced consensus, replication, and fault tolerance techniques.

Distributed systems are composed of components located on various networked computers that communicate and coordinate their actions through message passing. These systems enable high availability, scalability, and resilience, but also introduce complexities like network latency, partial failures, and consistency challenges.

User Always Sees Their Own Data

Users never see older data after newer ones have been applied.

The causal order of operations is preserved to ensure accurate state representation.

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Two-Phase Commit (2PC)

A protocol for atomic transactions:

Prepare Phase: The coordinator requests all participants to prepare their actions.

Frequently asked questions

What are lease-based locks in etcd?

Lease-based locks utilize etcd's lease mechanism for short-lived identifiers, providing a reliable way to coordinate access to shared resources.

How is system state stored as a sequence of events?

The system's state is maintained by recording all changes as sequential events, allowing for reconstruction of the state at any point in time.

Are events stored within an event store?

Yes, event stores are specifically designed to persistently record all state transitions as immutable events.

Is the state recovered by replaying events?

Indeed, the system's current state is reconstructed by sequentially replaying these stored events from the event store.

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