ZooKeeper: Because Coordinating Distributed Systems is a Zoo

ZooKeeper is a high-performance coordination service for distributed applications. It exposes common services - such as naming, configuration management, synchronization, and group services - in a simple interface so you don't have to write them from scratch. You can use it off-the-shelf to implement consensus, group management, leader election, and presence protocols. And you can build on it for your own, specific needs.

The following documents describe concepts and procedures to get you started using ZooKeeper. If you have more questions, please ask the mailing list or browse the archives.

  • ZooKeeper Overview Technical Overview Documents for Client Developers, Adminstrators, and Contributors
    • Overview - a bird's eye view of ZooKeeper, including design concepts and architecture
    • Getting Started - a tutorial-style guide for developers to install, run, and program to ZooKeeper
    • Release Notes - new developer and user facing features, improvements, and incompatibilities
  • Developers Documents for Developers using the ZooKeeper Client API
  • Administrators & Operators Documents for Administrators and Operations Engineers of ZooKeeper Deployments
  • Contributors Documents for Developers Contributing to the ZooKeeper Open Source Project
  • Miscellaneous ZooKeeper Documentation