An interesting Windows Azure architectural discussion – synchronizing multiple nodes

One of the interesting architectural discussions that comes up when designing highly scalable systems, such as those that run on Windows Azure, is how to co-ordinate multiple “nodes” so that they use use unique keys within an application or system. It sounds a fairly trivial task, but as with lots of engineering issues, when you examine it in more depth, there is more to this than first appears.

Fortunately, a colleague of mine, Josh Twist, who used to work at Microsoft in the UK, but now a Program Manager in the Windows Azure team, wrote an interesting article on this subject in MSDN Magazine, and I have pointed a few folk to the article, so its well worth a read.