Distributed Systems

These distributed systems guides explain what goes wrong when many machines share work. Each post pairs a failure with a practical fix.

Start with eventual consistency in practice. Then race conditions and optimistic locking cover concurrent writes. Later posts handle timeouts, clock skew and partitions.

26 articles

17/10/2022 11 min read

Clock Skew in Distributed Systems: Causes, Impact, and Clock Synchronization

Clock Skew in Distributed Systems breaks leases, caches, and event order. Learn the causes, the impact on reads, and how to sync clocks before bugs ship.
19/09/2022 10 min read

Health Checks in Distributed Systems: Liveness, Readiness, and Dependency Probes

Health Checks in Distributed Systems tell a platform if a task can serve traffic. Learn liveness, readiness, and…
22/08/2022 10 min read

Cron Jobs in Distributed Systems: Scheduling, Idempotency, and Missed Runs

Cron Jobs in Distributed Systems must run once, survive restarts, and stay idempotent. Learn locks, missed runs, jitter,…
25/07/2022 11 min read

Query Optimization for Backend Engineers: Indexes, Execution Plans, and Real-World Tuning

Query Optimization for Backend Engineers stops slow SQL from stalling APIs. Learn indexes, plans, and safe fixes you…
27/06/2022 10 min read

N+1 Queries: Detection, ORM Pitfalls, and Production Fixes

N+1 Queries hide inside ORM loops and then spike the database at peak load. Learn how to detect…
30/05/2022 10 min read

Read Replicas: Architecture, Replication Lag, and Consistency Trade-offs

Read Replicas cut read load, but lag can show stale rows to real users. Learn routing rules, lag…
02/05/2022 10 min read

Timeouts in Distributed Systems: Budgets, Cascading Failures, and Retry Safety

Timeouts in Distributed Systems bound how long a call may wait. Learn budgets, retry safety, and how to…
04/04/2022 10 min read

Network Partitions: Detection, Mitigation, and CAP in the Real World

Network Partitions split live clusters without warning. Learn how to detect the split, fence writers, and choose consistency…
07/03/2022 11 min read

Eventual Consistency in Practice: Models, Conflict Resolution, and User Experience

Eventual Consistency in Practice shapes what users see after a write lands. Learn conflict rules, read models, and…
07/02/2022 10 min read

Deadlocks in Databases and Distributed Systems: Causes, Detection, and Prevention

Deadlocks in Databases and Distributed Systems stall writes until one side aborts. Learn detection, lock order, timeouts, and…
10/01/2022 10 min read

Pessimistic Locking: Row Locks, Deadlocks, and Throughput Trade-offs

Pessimistic Locking holds a row until commit. See when row locks keep writes correct, and when they cause…
13/12/2021 10 min read

Optimistic Locking: Versioning, Conflicts, and High-Concurrency Writes

Optimistic Locking lets writers proceed without holding long row locks. Learn version checks, conflict retries, and when a…
15/11/2021 10 min read

Race Conditions in Backend Systems: Detection, Prevention, and Testing

Race Conditions in Backend Systems hide until load hits. Learn how to detect lost updates, block unsafe writes,…
18/10/2021 9 min read

Thread Safety in Backend Systems: Locks, Atomics, and Concurrency Patterns

Thread Safety in Backend Systems fails in quiet ways under real load. Learn locks, atomics, and patterns that…