3 ms·

Does anyone actually use Paxos in real life? And let me ask the same question for all other academic distributed algorithms right away. I recall seeing a study

Does anyone actually use Paxos in real life? And let me ask the same question for all other academic distributed algorithms right away. I recall seeing a study some 10 years ago checking the major cloud providers for Byzantine fault tolerance and finding none of them to exhibit the qualities that the known algorithms would guarantee; apparently they would just rely on timing and hoping things don't get too twisted.

baq 2y ago
Yes, if you’re using any sort of multi master db, you’re using a variant of paxos, raft or something which you shouldn’t really trust until aphyr blasts it into the low earth orbit. The paper itself is very approachable and worth spending an hour or so on.
- generationP 2y ago
  I remember trying to read the paper and giving up somewhere early in the proof. I certainly don't think it gives a great intuition why the algorithm holds, so "approachability" is a matter of definition (does it tell a fun story? sure yeah).
vitus 2y ago
> Does anyone actually use Paxos in real life? Yes, it's very widely used at Google through Chubby, which underpins many core pieces of infrastructure, including name resolution. (It used to be common practice to depend more directly on Chubby for synchronization of state via shared global files, but that fell out of favor about 6 years ago due to reliability risks associated with just blasting out changes globally without any canarying.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paxos_(computer_science)#Production_use_of_Paxos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paxos_(computer_science)#Produ... lists a bunch of other use cases (notably, Google's Spanner and Amazon's DynamoDB). > And let me ask the same question for all other academic distributed algorithms right away. Raft (designed as a more understandable alternative to Paxos) is more commonly used, as I understand it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raft_(algorithm)#Production_use_of_Raft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raft_(algorithm)#Production_us... > I recall seeing a study some 10 years ago checking the major cloud providers for Byzantine fault tolerance and finding none of them to exhibit the qualities that the known algorithms would guarantee. I'm curious which study you're referring to. I could believe that while Paxos might be used as a building block, it might not be used in a consistent manner throughout. Also, note that not all of the variations of Paxos handle Byzantine faults.
- generationP 2y ago
  Ah, so Raft is what everyone uses, and Paxos is used by the very big providers nowadays. Good to know! I can't find the study any more, though I'm pretty sure I saw it on HN...

baq 2y ago

Yes, if you’re using any sort of multi master db, you’re using a variant of paxos, raft or something which you shouldn’t really trust until aphyr blasts it into the low earth orbit. The paper itself is very approachable and worth spending an hour or so on.

generationP 2y ago
I remember trying to read the paper and giving up somewhere early in the proof. I certainly don't think it gives a great intuition why the algorithm holds, so "approachability" is a matter of definition (does it tell a fun story? sure yeah).

vitus 2y ago

> Does anyone actually use Paxos in real life? Yes, it's very widely used at Google through Chubby, which underpins many core pieces of infrastructure, including name resolution. (It used to be common practice to depend more directly on Chubby for synchronization of state via shared global files, but that fell out of favor about 6 years ago due to reliability risks associated with just blasting out changes globally without any canarying.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paxos_(computer_science)#Production_use_of_Paxos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paxos_(computer_science)#Produ... lists a bunch of other use cases (notably, Google's Spanner and Amazon's DynamoDB). > And let me ask the same question for all other academic distributed algorithms right away. Raft (designed as a more understandable alternative to Paxos) is more commonly used, as I understand it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raft_(algorithm)#Production_use_of_Raft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raft_(algorithm)#Production_us... > I recall seeing a study some 10 years ago checking the major cloud providers for Byzantine fault tolerance and finding none of them to exhibit the qualities that the known algorithms would guarantee. I'm curious which study you're referring to. I could believe that while Paxos might be used as a building block, it might not be used in a consistent manner throughout. Also, note that not all of the variations of Paxos handle Byzantine faults.

generationP 2y ago
Ah, so Raft is what everyone uses, and Paxos is used by the very big providers nowadays. Good to know! I can't find the study any more, though I'm pretty sure I saw it on HN...