Raft organizes consensus around a leader and terms#
Followers receive log entries from a leader. If election timeouts pass without valid leadership, a follower may become a candidate in a newer term. A candidate needs votes according to the protocol; a leader replicates entries and advances commitment under Raft's majority and safety rules.
If the leader fails, a later-term election chooses a replacement. This diagram omits many protocol rules deliberately. Use an existing database or coordination system when it already supplies replication; do not casually add Raft to application-level user data.
- Claiming every follower must acknowledge before commit.
- Equating Raft with arbitrary-failure protection.
- Adding Raft without explaining the replicated state machine that needs consensus.
Related practice problems
Use the manifest-backed prompts below to apply this lesson in a complete design.
- In Search of an Understandable Consensus AlgorithmUSENIX / Stanford
Reach this point to mark the lesson as read.