Distributed consensus: Making impossible possible

Heidi Howard explains how to construct resilient distributed systems on top of unreliable components. Starting almost two decades ago, with Leslie Lamports Paxos protocol, Heidi leads a journey to todays data centers, covering interesting impossibility results and demonstrating how to construct new fault-tolerance systems that you can depend upon everyday.

Heidi Howard explains how to construct resilient distributed systems on top of unreliable components. Starting almost two decades ago, with Leslie Lamport’s work on organizing parliament for a Greek island, Heidi leads a journey to today’s data centers and the systems powering companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. Along the way, you’ll explore interesting impossibility results, machines acting maliciously, and the complexity of today’s networks. Heidi then demonstrates how to reach agreement between many parties and how to construct new fault-tolerance systems that you can depend upon everyday.