How not to Fail at Distributed Systems with Examples from Riak

In this talk, we reflect on our years of supporting the Erlang based distributed key/value store, Riak, and share stories of how our clients' best intended configurations have come back to bite them in ways they did not foresee. This talk is intended as edutainment. We showcase some common pitfalls of distributed systems as taken from our Riak helpdesk history, explain why things went wrong and how to avoid making the same mistakes. Disclaimer: no client names are used in this talk and any logs or config files used have been anonymised. All characters and impressions used in this talk are entirely fictitious ones of my own creation and any resemblance to real persons, dead or alive, or other real-life entities, past or present, is purely coincidental.

AUDIENCE: This talk is recommended for helpdesk veterans, people interested in distributed systems and anybody who has ever touched Riak.