From Mainframe to Microservice: An Introduction to Distributed Systems

An introductory overview of distributed systems—what they are and why they're difficult to build. We explore fundamental ideas and practical concepts in distributed programming. What is the CAP theorem? What is distributed consensus? What are CRDTs? We also look at options for solving the split-brain problem while considering the trade-off of high availability as well as options for scaling shared data.

Transcript

1. From Mainframe to Microservice An Introduction to Distributed Systems @tyler_treat Workiva
2. An Introduction to Distributed Systems ❖ Building a foundation of understanding ❖ Why distributed systems? ❖ Universal fallacies ❖ Characteristics and the CAP theorem ❖ Common pitfalls ❖ Digging deeper ❖ Byzantine Generals Problem and consensus ❖ Split-brain ❖ Hybrid consistency models ❖ Scaling shared data and CRDTs
3. –Leslie Lamport “A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable.”
4. Scale Up vs. Scale Out ❖ Add resources to a node ❖ Increases node capacity, load is unaffected ❖ System complexity unaffected Vertical Scaling ❖ Add nodes to a cluster ❖ Decreases load, capacity is unaffected ❖ Availability and throughput w/ increased complexity Horizontal Scaling
5. A distributed system
 is a collection of independent computers that behave as a single coherent system.
6. Why Distributed Systems? Availability Fault Tolerance Throughput Architecture Economics serve every request resilient to failures parallel computation decoupled, focused services scale-out becoming manageable/
 cost-effective
7. oh shit…
8. –Ken Arnold “You have to design distributed systems with the expectation of failure.”
9. Distributed systems engineers are
 the world’s biggest pessimists.
10. Universal Fallacy #1 The network is reliable. ❖ Message delivery is never guaranteed ❖ Best effort ❖ Is it worth it? ❖ Resiliency/redundancy/failover
11. Universal Fallacy #2 Latency is zero. ❖ We cannot defy the laws of physics ❖ LAN to WAN deteriorates quickly ❖ Minimize network calls (batch) ❖ Design asynchronous systems
12. Universal Fallacy #3 Bandwidth is infinite. ❖ Out of our control ❖ Limit message sizes ❖ Use message queueing
13. Universal Fallacy #4 The network is secure. ❖ Everyone is out to get you ❖ Build in security from day 1 ❖ Multi-layered ❖ Encrypt, pentest, train developers
14. Universal Fallacy #5 Topology doesn’t change. ❖ Network topology is dynamic ❖ Don’t statically address hosts ❖ Collection of services, not nodes ❖ Service discovery
15. Universal Fallacy #6 There is one administrator. ❖ May integrate with third-party systems ❖ “Is it our problem or theirs?” ❖ Conflicting policies/priorities ❖ Third parties constrain; weigh the risk
16. Universal Fallacy #7 Transport cost is zero. ❖ Monetary and practical costs ❖ Building/maintaining a network is not trivial ❖ The “perfect” system might be too costly
17. Universal Fallacy #8 The network is homogenous. ❖ Networks are almost never homogenous ❖ Third-party integration? ❖ Consider interoperability ❖ Avoid proprietary protocols
18. These problems apply to LAN and WAN systems
 (single-data-center and cross-data-center)
 No one is safe.
19. –Murphy’s Law “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.”
21. Characteristics of a Reliable Distributed System Fault-tolerant Available Scalable 
 Consistent Secure Performant nodes can fail serve all the requests, all the time behave correctly with changing topologies state is coordinated across nodes access is authenticated it’s fast!
23. Distributed systems are all about trade-offs.
24. CAP Theorem ❖ Presented in 1998 by Eric Brewer ❖ Impossible to guarantee all three: ❖ Consistency ❖ Availability ❖ Partition tolerance
25. Consistency
26. Consistency ❖ Linearizable - there exists a total order of all state updates and each update appears atomic ❖ E.g. mutexes make operations appear atomic ❖ When operations are linearizable, we can assign a unique “timestamp” to each one (total order) ❖ A system is consistent if every node shares the same total order ❖ Consistency which is both global and instantaneous is impossible
27. Consistency Eventual consistency
 replicas allowed to diverge, eventually converge
 Strong consistency
 replicas can’t diverge; requires linearizability
28. Availability ❖ Every request received by a non-failing node must be served ❖ If a piece of data required for a request is unavailable, the system is unavailable ❖ 100% availability is a myth
29. Partition Tolerance ❖ A partition is a split in the network—many causes ❖ Partition tolerance means partitions can happen ❖ CA is easy when your network is perfectly reliable ❖ Your network is not perfectly reliable
30. Partition Tolerance
31. Common Pitfalls ❖ Halting failure - machine stops ❖ Network failure - network connection breaks ❖ Omission failure - messages are lost ❖ Timing failure - clock skew ❖ Byzantine failure - arbitrary failure
32. Exploring some higher-level concepts Digging Deeper
33. Byzantine Generals Problem ❖ Consider a city under siege by two allied armies ❖ Each army has a general ❖ One general is the leader ❖ Armies must agree when to attack ❖ Must use messengers to communicate ❖ Messengers can be captured by defenders
34. Byzantine Generals Problem
35. Byzantine Generals Problem ❖ Send 100 messages, attack no matter what ❖ A might attack without B ❖ Send 100 messages, wait for acks, attack if confident ❖ B might attack without A ❖ Messages have overhead ❖ Can’t reliably make decision (provenly impossible)
36. Distributed Consensus ❖ Replace 2 generals with N generals ❖ Nodes must agree on data value ❖ Solutions: ❖ Multi-phase commit ❖ State replication
37. Two-Phase Commit ❖ Blocking protocol ❖ Coordinator waits for cohorts ❖ Cohorts wait for commit/rollback ❖ Can deadlock
38. Three-Phase Commit ❖ Non-blocking protocol ❖ Abort on timeouts ❖ Susceptible to network partitions
39. State Replication ❖ E.g. Paxos, Raft protocols ❖ Elect a leader (coordinator) ❖ All changes go through leader ❖ Each change appends log entry ❖ Each node has log replica
40. State Replication ❖ Must have quorum (majority) to proceed ❖ Commit once quorum acks ❖ Quorums mitigate partitions ❖ Logs allow state to be rebuilt
41. Split-Brain
42. Split-Brain
43. Split-Brain
44. Split-Brain ❖ Optimistic (AP) - let partitions work as usual ❖ Pessimistic (CP) - quorum partition works, fence others
45. Hybrid Consistency Models ❖ Weak == available, low latency, stale reads ❖ Strong == fresh reads, less available, high latency ❖ How do you choose a consistency model? ❖ Hybrid models ❖ Weaker models when possible (likes, followers, votes) ❖ Stronger models when necessary ❖ Tunable consistency models (Cassandra, Riak, etc.)
46. Scaling Shared Data ❖ Sharing mutable data at large scale is difficult ❖ Solutions: ❖ Immutable data ❖ Last write wins ❖ Application-level conflict resolution ❖ Causal ordering (e.g. vector clocks) ❖ Distributed data types (CRDTs)
47. Scaling Shared Data Imagine a shared, global counter…
 “Get, add 1, and put” transaction will not scale
48. CRDT ❖ Conflict-free Replicated Data Type ❖ Convergent: state-based ❖ Commutative: operations-based ❖ E.g. distributed sets, lists, maps, counters ❖ Update concurrently w/o writer coordination
49. CRDT ❖ CRDTs always converge (provably) ❖ Operations commute (order doesn’t matter) ❖ Highly available, eventually consistent ❖ Always reach consistent state ❖ Drawbacks: ❖ Requires knowledge of all clients ❖ Must be associative, commutative, and idempotent
50. G-Counter
51. CRDT ❖ Add to set is associative, commutative, idempotent ❖ add(“a”), add(“b”), add(“a”) => {“a”, “b”} ❖ Adding and removing items is not ❖ add(“a”), remove(“a”) => {} ❖ remove(“a”), add(“a”) => {“a”} ❖ CRDTs require interpretation of common data structures w/ limitations
52. Two-Phase Set ❖ Use two sets, one for adding, one for removing ❖ Elements can be added once and removed once ❖ {
 “a”: [“a”, “b”, “c”],
 “r”: [“a”]
 } ❖ => {“b”, “c”} ❖ add(“a”), remove(“a”) => {“a”: [“a”], “r”: [“a”]} ❖ remove(“a”), add(“a”) => {“a”: [“a”], “r”: [“a”]}
54. Let’s Recap...
55. Distributed architectures allow us to build highly available, fault-tolerant systems.
56. We can't live in this fantasy land
 where everything works perfectly
 all of the time.
59. Shit happens — network partitions, hardware failure, GC pauses, latency, dropped packets…
60. Build resilient systems.
61. Design for failure.
62. kill -9
63. Consider the trade-off between consistency and availability.
64. Partition tolerance is not an option,
 it’s required.
 
 (if you’re building a distributed system)
65. Use weak consistency when possible, strong when necessary.
66. Sharing data at scale is hard,
 let’s go shopping.
 
 (or consider your options)
67. State is hell.
68. Further Readings ❖ Jepsen series
 Kyle Kingsbury (aphyr) ❖ A Comprehensive Study of Convergent and Commutative Replicated Data Types
 Shapiro et al. ❖ In Search of an Understandable Consensus Algorithm
 Ongaro et al. ❖ CAP Twelve Years Later
 Eric Brewer ❖ Many, many more…
69. @tyler_treat github.com/tylertreat
 bravenewgeek.com Thanks!