Raft
Raft is an easily understandable consensus protocol achieving consistency equivalent to Multi-Paxos through leader election + log replication + safety constraints.
Purpose
To provide a consensus protocol that is easier to understand and implement than Paxos, widely used in modern distributed systems.
Mechanism
Node roles: Leader/Follower/Candidate. The Leader accepts writes and replicates the log to Followers; commits after a majority acknowledges. Elections use randomized timeouts to avoid livelocks. Terms prevent stale Leaders.
Use cases
- Distributed consensus implementation
- Leader election protocol
- Log replication