The architecture behind 99.9999% uptime in Erlang
3 days ago
- #distributed-systems
- #high-availability
- #erlang
- Erlang enables high availability (99.9999% uptime) through lightweight processes and the BEAM virtual machine.
- Processes in Erlang are isolated, communicate via messages (Actor Model), and can fail independently without affecting others.
- Erlang processes are extremely lightweight (327 words overhead) compared to OS threads (512KB+).
- Supervision trees in Erlang allow monitoring and restarting failed processes, ensuring system resilience.
- Preemptive scheduling in BEAM allows efficient execution of millions of processes across CPU cores.
- Hot code loading in Erlang enables updates without downtime, supporting zero-downtime deployments.
- Built-in distribution features allow Erlang nodes to form clusters, balance load, and handle failures seamlessly.
- Erlang's architecture is designed for fault tolerance, scalability, and real-time system requirements.