Distributed Systems
Master consensus algorithms, leader election, fault tolerance, and distributed transactions.
In distributed systems, faults and partial failures are the norm, not edge cases. Designs that assume a single machine or a reliable network eventually collapse into non-deterministic, hard-to-reproduce failures.
These topics help you build a rigorous mental model of consensus, replication, transactions, and eventual consistency—how failures propagate, where latency and partitions surface, and which trade-offs are unavoidable. You'll learn to design, reason about, and diagnose distributed behavior under real constraints, and explain those decisions clearly in interviews.
Topics in this category
Partition Tolerance: Concepts, Trade-offs & Failure Modes
Read →Learn how distributed systems handle network partitions and maintain availability.
Fault Tolerance: Concepts, Trade-offs & Failure Modes
Read →Learn how to design systems that continue operating correctly even when components fail.
Consensus Algorithms (Raft, Paxos)
Read →Learn how distributed systems achieve consensus among nodes using Raft and Paxos algorithms.
Leader Election: Concepts, Trade-offs & Failure Modes
Read →Learn how distributed systems elect a leader to coordinate activities and ensure consistency.
Clock Synchronization (NTP, Lamport)
Read →Learn how distributed systems synchronize clocks and order events using NTP and Lamport clocks.
Distributed Transactions: Concepts, Trade-offs & Failure Modes
Read →Learn how to maintain ACID properties across multiple nodes in distributed systems.
Two-Phase Commit (2PC)
Read →Learn the Two-Phase Commit protocol for achieving atomicity in distributed transactions.
Three-Phase Commit (3PC)
Read →Learn Three-Phase Commit protocol that reduces blocking compared to 2PC.
Idempotency: Concepts, Trade-offs & Failure Modes
Read →Learn how to make operations idempotent to handle retries and failures safely in distributed systems.
Replication Lag: Concepts, Trade-offs & Failure Modes
Read →Learn about replication lag in distributed databases and how to handle it.
Gossip Protocol: Concepts, Trade-offs & Failure Modes
Read →Learn how gossip protocols enable efficient information dissemination in large-scale distributed systems.
Heartbeats & Health Checks
Read →Learn how to monitor node health and detect failures in distributed systems.
Distributed Logging: Concepts, Trade-offs & Failure Modes
Read →Learn how to collect, aggregate, and analyze logs from distributed systems.