Glossary: Raft Consensus Algorithm

What is Raft?

Raft is a distributed consensus algorithm designed to be understandable and durable.

In general, the algorithm is useful when we want to order the events that happen in a distributed system on different nodes.

In RavenDB, Raft is used to coordinate the execution of cluster-wide operations over the nodes.

If we want to create a database in a cluster, creating the database on all cluster nodes, the Raft will be used to make sure that the database creation is executed in at least (n/2) + 1 nodes. (quorum of nodes)

Additional Reading

• A website with visualization and links to publications -> https://raft.github.io/
• A link to the original PhD dissertation on Raft Algorithm -> https://github.com/ongardie/dissertation
• Visualization and simple tutorial on how Raft works -> http://thesecretlivesofdata.com/raft/