> “There are only three modes for a distributed system - it implements paxos/raft itself, it relies on a data store that implements paxos/raft or it’s wrong.”

> “There are only three modes for a distributed system - it implements paxos/raft itself, it relies on a data store that implements paxos/raft or it’s wrong.” That sounds like something Al Vermeulen would say. Though my recollection of the quote is more along the lines of: "There are three types of consistent distributed systems: paxos, broken protocols, and single points of failures." I'm guessing the talk it came from is Under The Covers: Core Distributed Systems Primitives that Power Our Platform[0]. That presentation is full of great insight into how AWS thinks about distributed systems. The other presenter, Swami, is the VP of AWS Databases now but started off getting Amazon's initial Paxos implementation going. I was lucky enough to work on those core building blocks and it was an incredible experience. 0 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVvFVwyElLY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVvFVwyElLY