tag: distributed-systems
articles: 7 · beats: 1
latest: August 9, 2026
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Distributed Systems
7 Crashtech articles on Distributed Systems, filed under System Design, published between July 2026 and August 2026. Every piece is full-text HTML with sources, structured data and an authored FAQ.
All 7 sit in the System Design beat. System Design
When 87% of Your Cache Vanishes
Consistent hashing maps nodes and keys to a circle, so adding a server moves only 1/N of keys instead of almost all of them.
Why Raft Consensus Prevents Split-Brain
Raft ensures only one partition can reach quorum, making split-brain impossible. Writes commit to majorities. Powers etcd and CockroachDB.
Token Buckets: Bounding Rate Limits at the Edge
Fixed-window counters leak at boundaries. Token buckets refill steadily, absorb bursts, and bound the sustained rate strictly—the algorithm Stripe uses.
The CAP Theorem Is Not a Menu
Network partitions force a hard choice: refuse writes (CP) or accept and diverge (AP). Why the two-of-three myth is wrong, and what PACELC really tells us.
Why Raft Won: Consensus Built for Humans
Paxos is correct but hard to understand; Raft made consensus explicit. Same guarantees, different adoption. Why comprehensibility matters in algorithms.
Vector Clocks: Detecting Causality in Distributed Systems
Vector clocks solve distributed ordering: when wall-clock timestamps fail to detect concurrent writes, vector clocks reveal true causality and conflicts.
Operational Transforms vs CRDTs
Why Google Docs needs a server and Figma doesn't: how two competing approaches to concurrent editing resolve the same-string conflict, and when each wins.
Questions we answer about Distributed Systems
- Why does hash(key) mod N break when cluster size changes?
- How does consistent hashing fix that?
- What happens when a node fails in a consistent hash ring?
- What are virtual nodes and why do they matter?
- When should you NOT use consistent hashing?
- What is split-brain and why is it dangerous?
- How does active-passive failover fail?
- How does Raft prevent split-brain?
- What are terms and election timeouts in Raft?
- When does a write commit in Raft?
Covered alongside
Frequently asked questions
What does Crashtech publish about Distributed Systems?
7 articles tagged Distributed Systems, the most recent published August 9, 2026. All 7 sit in the System Design beat. Each carries numbered sources, an authored FAQ and full structured data.
What questions about Distributed Systems does Crashtech answer directly?
10 questions have a dedicated answer page under this tag, including “Why does hash(key) mod N break when cluster size changes?”. Each answer is authored prose from the article it belongs to, not a generated summary.
Can AI assistants read Crashtech's Distributed Systems coverage?
Yes. Crashtech serves full static HTML to every crawler, allows all major AI user agents in robots.txt, and publishes an llms.txt manifest plus a full-text corpus, so assistants can retrieve and cite these articles directly.