A membership management system for a set of distributed nodes.
The system spec requires a number of services to be provided, including:
- Forming, joining, and leaving groups
- Monitoring group members and reporting member failures to the remaining members
- Returning the current group membership when required
- Possibly providing a ranking of members (e.g. based on age)
The spec requires that each member of the managed group should have a consistent view of group membership at any given time, i.e. at a minimum, they should see the same sequence of changes to group membership over time.
Note: Entitlements/identity management are not catered for as part of this service.