While similar, Serf and Etcd solve a different problem. Etcd is strong consistent (all nodes will see the same data, however a partition may cause the system to not accept writes) while Serf is eventually consistent (all nodes are not guaranteed to see the same data, however the system will always accept writes)
So somethings like a distributed lock is impossible to implement with Serf.
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Whats the communities opinion on Serf? How does it measure up against Etcd?
While similar, Serf and Etcd solve a different problem. Etcd is strong consistent (all nodes will see the same data, however a partition may cause the system to not accept writes) while Serf is eventually consistent (all nodes are not guaranteed to see the same data, however the system will always accept writes)
So somethings like a distributed lock is impossible to implement with Serf.
Very interesting, wasn't aware that ETCD is strongly consistent. This makes alot of sense in terms of Brewster's theorem. Thanks for clarifying!