Leader Election

Definitions

1. A coordination pattern in distributed systems where nodes agree on a single leader responsible for a specific task (e.g., writes, scheduling). If the leader fails, surviving nodes elect a new one. Used in Raft, ZooKeeper, and etcd.

   In plain English: A way for a group of servers to agree on which one is in charge, and pick a new boss if the current one goes down.

   Example: "Our scheduler uses leader election via etcd — only one instance runs cron jobs, but if it dies, another takes over within seconds."

Related Terms

• Webhook vs. Polling
• Event-Driven Architecture
• Circuit Breaker
• Remoting
• Saga Pattern
• Tombstone
• Outbox Pattern
• Inbox Pattern