When building distributed systems or breaking down an existing monolithic system, managing concurrently accessed shared resources has always been a headache. Specifically, multiple services attempting to write to the same resource simultaneously can lead to data inconsistencies and unexpected errors. I've encountered such scenarios many times, especially during stock updates or order processing steps in a production ERP system. To manage these complex situations, distributed lock mechanisms come into play. A simple mutex or semaphore on a single server is insufficient because our application might be running on multiple servers. A distributed lock ensures that only one of these different processes can access a specific resource at any given time. In this post, I will delve into three fundamental distributed lock alternatives that I frequently use in my experience and that every system architect should know. What is a Distributed Lock and Why Do We Need It?…