Distributed Logs: From Theory to Production

A distributed log is the foundation of every reliable streaming system. This series builds the mental model from the ground up — starting with what the log actually guarantees, through how producers and consumers interact with it reliably, to how you govern, secure, and observe it in production.

Chapters #

1. The Distributed Log — ordering, durability, visibility, delivery semantics, topics, partitions, Redpanda’s architecture, and protocol compatibility
2. Advanced Producer Patterns — batching, framing, compression, idempotent producers, acknowledgment semantics, and retry-storm containment
3. Consumer Reliability — group coordination, rebalance protocol, static membership, offset management, lag, and backpressure
4. Data Governance — schema registry, wire format, Avro vs Protobuf, compatibility modes, retention and compaction
5. Security and Observability — TLS/mTLS, SASL/OIDC, ACLs, SLIs, golden signals, and burn-rate alerting
6. Integration — Redpanda Connect, declarative pipelines, stateless transformations, CDC, and failure semantics