MyDistributed.Systems

In this post, we want to review the Raft algorithm which is a leader-based consensus algorithm. Raft is a simpler and more understandable alternative to Multi-Paxos, and since its relatively recent invention, it has been widely adopted in the industry. Unlike Multi-Paxos that extends an algorithm that is originally designed for consensus on a single value, Raft directly considers the problem of consensus on a sequence of values. This makes Raft much more practical and understandable than Multi-Paxos. 

Consensus is one of the fundamental problems in distributed systems. In this post, we want to see what is consensus and review the most famous consensus algorithm—Paxos. we will see that despite exaggeration about its complexities, Paxos, at least the singe-decree Paxos that aims to achieve consensus on a single value, is actually very intuitive and easy to understand.