All 28 articles, sorted alphabetically
Understanding the CAP Theorem
The CAP Theorem explains why distributed systems cannot guarantee consistency, availability, and partition tolerance simultaneously. Understand the trade-offs between CA, CP, and AP systems with real-world examples.
Read article →In Search of a Leader: Understanding Raft Consensus - AICassindra
In the world of distributed systems, getting a cluster of nodes to agree on something—like the order of log entries—is notoriously difficult.
Read article →API Gateway Patterns
Kong + Ambassador + AWS API Gateway. Auth + routing + rate limits.
Read article →Bulkhead Pattern
Isolate resources per feature. Prevent noisy neighbor.
Read article →Circuit Breaker Pattern
Fail fast when dependency down. Prevent cascade failures.
Read article →Anti-entropy -- healing divergence between replicas
Deep-dive on anti-entropy: the replica-divergence problem, background reconciliation, Merkle trees for efficient difference detection (O(1)/log(n)), r…
Read article →Bounded staleness architecture
Deep-dive on bounded-staleness consistency: version-based and time-based bounds, follower applied position and lag, read-path enforcement (serve, wait…
Read article →Causal consistency architecture
Deep-dive on causal consistency: the happened-before relation and session guarantees, dependency tracking with vector clocks, hold-until-ready applica…
Read article →Chain replication -- strong consistency with simple roles
Deep-dive on chain replication: the chain structure (head to tail), writes propagating down and committing at the tail, reads from the tail (committed…
Read article →Raft consensus architecture
Deep-dive on Raft consensus: roles, log replication, commit index, snapshots, joint-consensus membership, and the operational surface.
Read article →CRDT replication architecture
Deep-dive on CRDT replication: state-based vs op-based vs delta CRDTs, join-semilattice merges, OR-Sets and PN-counters, version vectors and dots, seq…
Read article →Distributed Hash Table Architecture in Depth
A 2500-word walkthrough of DHT architecture: key + node id space, Chord finger tables, Kademlia k-buckets, lookup, replication, churn, stabilization, …
Read article →Fencing tokens -- making distributed locks safe against pauses
Deep-dive on fencing tokens: the paused-lock-holder problem (GC/network/VM pauses past the lease), the monotonic fencing token issued per grant, resou…
Read article →Gray failure architecture
Deep-dive on gray failure: the degraded component whose shallow health check passes while real requests suffer, why differential observability is both…
Read article →Hinted handoff
Deep-dive on hinted handoff, the Dynamo-style mechanism that preserves write availability when a replica is temporarily down: a live custodian stores …
Read article →Hybrid Logical Clocks (HLC)
How HLC combines physical wall clock with logical Lamport component for better ordering.
Read article →Leader Election
The leader election problem, the algorithms (bully, ring, Paxos/Raft-based), and how systems like Kubernetes and ZooKeeper implement it.
Read article →Leases -- time-bounded exclusive rights
Deep-dive on distributed leases: the safe-exclusive-access need, the time-bounded grant, expiry (auto-release), renewal (by the live holder), contrast…
Read article →Merkle tree architecture
Deep-dive on Merkle trees for replica reconciliation: leaf hashes over key ranges, parent hashes up to a single root, root-then-descend comparison, dr…
Read article →Operational Transform
How Operational Transform enabled Google Docs-style collaborative editing before CRDTs.
Read article →Transactional outbox architecture
Deep-dive on the transactional outbox pattern: how writing the business change and the event to publish in one local database transaction eliminates t…
Read article →Paxos
How classical Paxos works: proposers, acceptors, learners, and the two-phase protocol that achieves consensus.
Read article →Phi-accrual failure detectors
Deep-dive on phi-accrual failure detection: why fixed timeouts fail, the sampling window and gap-distribution estimator, how phi maps silence to log-s…
Read article →Quorum
How quorum-based systems (N, R, W) balance consistency, availability, and performance.
Read article →Raft log replication
Deep-dive on Raft log replication: leader-based writes, log entries with term/index/command, AppendEntries replication, majority commit for fault tole…
Read article →Read repair and anti-entropy architecture
Deep-dive on the repair mechanisms behind leaderless eventual consistency: read repair on the coordinator's read path with th…
Read article →Total order broadcast architecture
Deep-dive on total order (atomic) broadcast: the agreement, total-order, validity, and integrity guarantees, equivalence to consensus, leader-sequence…
Read article →Replication watermarks architecture
Deep-dive on watermarks in a replicated log: the high-water mark as the committed, safe-to-read boundary computed from the minimum offset replicated t…
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