Ongaro, Diego and Ousterhout, John, In Search of an Understandable Consensus Algorithm (2014)
The Raft paper.
Page 4 contains the spec for the algorithm, tabulated.
problem decomposition in distributed systems problems
- what (and how big) is the state space?
- can you decompose it by multiplying, gluing, or otherwise composing several state machines together?
- is gluing control flow?
- what parts of the algorithm are you making claims about, and how do those claims compose?
- can you outperform mixed strategies or randomization in a subproblem?
Refs
- Ongaro & Ousterhout (2025) In Search of an Understandable Consensus Algorithm (2014), , https://courses.cs.duke.edu/fall25/compsci512/internal/readings/raft.pdf.