Anticipate Failure in Distributed Systems

In a distributed system, constant vigilance is necessary regarding potential failures. Every communication across the network carries uncertainty; it’s unclear whether a message failed to reach its destination or if a response is simply delayed. Effective handling of these situations requires proactive design, with error handling integrated from the beginning. Every remote procedure call (RPC) should anticipate errors, acknowledging that failure is always a possibility, regardless of how the API is structured. Planning for various failure scenarios is crucial, as the complexity of distributed systems introduces more potential failure modes than single-node setups.