topic / distributed-systems

Distributed Systems

Reason about software when machines, networks, and clocks can fail independently.

Explore partial failure, message delivery, consistency, replication, quorums, leader election, consensus, distributed transactions, logical clocks, and recovery.

1 article · 1 video · 1 trace · 3 request flows · 1 interview · 7 total

Articles

distributed systemsSep 25, 2026

Partial Failure Changes the Design of a Distributed System

Understand why timeouts, retries, ordering, and consistency matter when remote machines can fail independently.

8 min readRead

Request Flows

request flow · 5 stagesOrder Book StateVisual map of an order book showing bids, asks, spread, and depth at multiple price levels.request flow · 5 stagesMulti-Region Active-Passive ArchitectureVisualize a primary region handling all traffic, a passive backup region ready to take over, and the failover path when the primary becomes unhealthy.request flow · 5 stagesRaft Replicates a Command Before Committing ItFollow a client command through the leader, replicated log, quorum rule, state-machine application, and reply.

Videos

In production

distributed systemsSep 25, 2026

How Raft Commits a Log Entry

A planned animation follows a command from the elected leader through follower replication, quorum commitment, and state-machine application.

Details

Traces

trace 01 · systemTrace a Command Through a Raft LeaderFollow a client command from the leader's log through replication, quorum commitment, state-machine application, and reply.

Interviews

hard · t3What Does a Quorum Commit Guarantee?A distributed-systems prompt about majority replication, protocol safety, leader changes, and availability without a quorum.

Explore adjacent

networking databases system design cloud infrastructure partial failure and timeouts replication and consistency consensus and raft

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