Cloudflare Meerkat: A New Experiment in Global Consensus

Cloudflare Meerkat - Globally distributed consensus

We are introducing Meerkat, an experimental consensus service designed to manage control-plane state across our 330+ global data centers. Unlike traditional systems that rely on a single leader and struggle with network delays, Meerkat uses the QuePaxa algorithm to allow all replicas to write simultaneously. This approach ensures strong consistency and high availability even when parts of our network fail, marking the first industrial deployment of QuePaxa at this scale.

"Unlike weaker forms of consistency, linearizability relieves programmers from thinking about all the weird behaviors the data systems might exhibit."