Replicated State Machines
Replicated State Machines (RSMs) are a fundamental distributed systems concept where multiple servers maintain identical copies of a deterministic state machine to achieve fault tolerance and high availability. They ensure that all replicas process the same sequence of commands in the same order, leading to consistent state across the system. This approach is widely used in consensus algorithms and distributed databases to handle failures without data loss.
Developers should learn about Replicated State Machines when building or working with distributed systems that require strong consistency, such as financial transaction systems, distributed databases (e.g., etcd, ZooKeeper), or consensus protocols like Raft and Paxos. They are essential for ensuring data integrity and availability in fault-prone environments, making them critical for applications where reliability is non-negotiable, such as cloud services or blockchain networks.