Heartbeat Mechanisms in Distributed Systems: Principles, Implementation, and Best Practices

Introduction

In a distributed system, how do you know whether a node or service is alive and running as it should? Unlike a monolithic application, where all components run inside a single process, a distributed system spans many machines, multiple networks, and several data centers. The question becomes even more pressing when the nodes are geographically separated. That is exactly where heartbeat mechanisms come in.