I recommend dreadlock: https://github.com/jamwt/dreadlock https://github.com/jamwt/dreadlock It will release the lock when the client dies (disclaimer: I wrot

I recommend dreadlock: https://github.com/jamwt/dreadlock https://github.com/jamwt/dreadlock It will release the lock when the client dies (disclaimer: I wrote it). Or you can go whole hog and use zookeeper + ephemeral nodes. More robust but quite a bit more complex.