The Simple Magic of Consistent Hashing

The simplicity of consistent hashing is pretty mind-blowing. Here you have a number of nodes in a cluster of databases, or in a cluster of web caches. How do you figure out where the data for a particular key goes in that cluster?

An Update On The NoSQL Handbook

A couple of months ago I set out to write a book on NoSQL. It’s about time I give an update on how it’s been going, and when you can expect a book in your hands, or rather, on your screen.

Web Operations 101 For Developers

This post is not about devops, it’s not about lean startups, it’s not about web scale, it’s not about the cloud, and it’s not about continuous deployment. This post is about you, the developer who’s main purpose in life has always been to build great web applications. In a pretty traditional world you write code, you write tests for it, you deploy, and you go home. Until now.

EventMachine, How Does It Work?

At this year’s Scottish Ruby Conference, I gave a talk about EventMachine, slides are available. Amidst the hype around Node.js it’s too easy to forget that Ruby has had evented I/O libraries for years. EventMachine, libebb, rev, cool.io, to name a few. As a general introduction I recommend reading Dan Kegel’s article on the C10K problem, the problem of handling 10000 server connections on a single machine. It introduces all the evented approaches that have been implemented in the different operating systems over the last some 15 years.