Drawn from production engineering and the systems I explore on the side. Thoughts are mine; AI helps refine the writing.https://rafeemohamed.com/en-ushttps://rafeemohamed.com/blogs/distributed-transactions-sagas/https://rafeemohamed.com/blogs/distributed-transactions-sagas/The saga pattern for long-lived business transactions. Coordinating multi-step workflows across services without holding locks, and handling failure through compensations.Thu, 30 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTdistributed-systemssagasmicroserviceshttps://rafeemohamed.com/blogs/distributed-transactions-commit-protocols/https://rafeemohamed.com/blogs/distributed-transactions-commit-protocols/How distributed systems get every node to agree on whether a transaction committed. From two-phase commit through Paxos Commit, and the safety/liveness trade-offs each one makes.Wed, 29 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTdistributed-systemsconsistency2pchttps://rafeemohamed.com/blogs/distributed-rate-limiter/https://rafeemohamed.com/blogs/distributed-rate-limiter/Designing a rate limiter that holds up at high request rates: the algorithm trade-offs, where it lives in the stack, and what starts to break as you scale.Sun, 18 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTdistributed-systemsrate-limitingredishttps://rafeemohamed.com/blogs/rate-limiting-algorithms/https://rafeemohamed.com/blogs/rate-limiting-algorithms/The common rate-limiting algorithms, what each one trades off, and the race conditions you have to design around.Mon, 12 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTdistributed-systemsrate-limitingalgorithmsredis