Consensus in Distributed Systems: Understanding the Raft Algorithm

Consider a group of friends planning a weekend outing. To make the trip successful, they need consensus on the location, schedule, and budget . Typically, one person is chosen as the leader — responsible for decisions, tracking expenses, and keeping everyone informed, including any new members who join later. If the leader steps down, the group elects another to maintain continuity . In distributed computing, clusters of servers face a similar challenge — they must agree on shared state and decisions. This is achieved through C onsensus Protocols . Among the most well-known are Viewstamped Replication (VSR), Zookeeper Atomic Broadcast (ZAB), Paxos, and Raft. In this article, we will explore Raft — designed to be more understandable while ensuring reliability in distributed system s .