Distributed Locking in Practice: Guarantees, Failure Scenarios and Better Alternatives (3/4)
15. Distributed Locking Is Only One Coordination Pattern By this point, we've established an important progression in how distributed systems handle coordination. A distributed lock is designed to solve a very specific problem: coordinating ownership of a resource across multiple machines. It ensures that only one node can act on a shared resource at a time. As systems evolved, we introduced…
Distributed locking is just one way that distributed systems coordinate resources. It ensures only one node can act on a shared resource at a time. Leases were introduced to handle abandoned locks from crashed or unreachable nodes. Fencing tokens address stale owners even if a node believes it still holds a lock. Modern systems still use leader election and consensus because exclusive ownership isn't always the goal.
Instead of multiple machines competing for the same resource, the goal is often for one machine to coordinate the rest. This shifts the coordination model. Instead of continuously competing for lock ownership, a single instance becomes the leader responsible for shared tasks like scheduling jobs or coordinating cluster state. The leader remains long-lived until a failure occurs, at which point the system elects a new leader.
Leader election is not consensus, which ensures agreement on shared state despite failures. The distinction is important because leader election only determines who coordinates, while consensus guarantees agreement.
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