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Systems Engineering Track

Sharding, Time and Coordination

Split data across machines without creating hotspots, measure what growth costs in bytes moved, and coordinate work when no two clocks agree and a paused process still believes it holds the lock.

Advanced · production systems
About 140 min reading
30 authored sections

Before you start: Distributed Systems for Production Engineers, or partial failure, idempotency and replication lag.

Plan for 5–7 hours of hands-on work in addition to reading. This is an initial estimate; setup and extensions vary.

Open before purchase

A useful preview, not a teaser

Read these complete sections to judge the technical depth, teaching style, and architecture standard before buying.

Preview 1

Course Contract: What You Will Be Able to Operate

Second in the sequence: placement, time and coordination, each met as a failure before its mechanism.

Preview 2

When One Machine Stops Being Enough

Replication gave you more readers. It did not give you more writers, or more disk.

Preview 3

The Tenant That Is 40% of Your Traffic

You avoided the monotonic key. You hashed the tenant id, like the documentation says. One shard is still on fire.

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Complete curriculum

30 sections · 2 parts + coordination studio

Course orientation

  1. Course ContractFree
  2. Start Here If You Are NewCourse Pass
  3. The System So FarCourse Pass

Part 1 · Splitting the Data

  1. When One Machine EndsFree
  2. Range and HashCourse Pass
  3. The 40% MerchantFree
  4. Choosing the KeyCourse Pass
  5. What Moves When You GrowCourse Pass
  6. Where the Mapping LivesCourse Pass
  7. Resharding LiveCourse Pass
  8. Secondary IndexesCourse Pass
  9. Cross-Shard WorkCourse Pass

Part 2 · Time You Cannot Trust

  1. Wall Clocks LieCourse Pass
  2. Skew and NTPCourse Pass
  3. Ordering Without a ClockCourse Pass
  4. Lamport and Vector ClocksCourse Pass
  5. Hybrid Clocks and TrueTimeCourse Pass
  6. IDs That SortCourse Pass
  7. Locks, Leases and ExpiryCourse Pass
  8. The Fencing TokenCourse Pass
  9. Electing an OwnerCourse Pass

Coordination Studio

  1. Lab 1 · Hot ShardCourse Pass
  2. Lab 2 · The RingCourse Pass
  3. Lab 3 · FencingCourse Pass
  4. Challenge · Move a Shard LiveCourse Pass

Architect’s Desk

  1. ADR-002 · The Partition KeyCourse Pass
  2. When Not to ShardCourse Pass
  3. Review This SchemeCourse Pass
  4. AssessmentCourse Pass
  5. ReferencesCourse Pass