Maintaining coherency in distributed operating systems for network devices

A method comprising:

• executing, by at least one of a plurality of hardware computing nodes, an asynchronous object flooding protocol by which to discover each of the plurality of hardware computing nodes;
• synchronizing, responsive to discovering each of the plurality of hardware computing nodes and via the asynchronous object flooding protocol, operating system state information in an unordered manner;
• and
• executing, by a plurality of hardware computing nodes and based on the synchronized operating system state information, a distributed operating system by which to provide a single execution environment in which one or more application execute across the plurality of hardware computing nodes;
• determining, by at least one of the plurality of hardware computing nodes included within a network device and via a synchronous communication protocol that ensures delivery of changes in an order the changes occur, whether one or more of the plurality of hardware computing nodes has failed;
• determining, by the at least one of the plurality of hardware computing nodes, whether remaining ones of the plurality of hardware computing nodes exceeds a quorum threshold;
• and
• restarting, by the at least one of the plurality of hardware computing nodes and when the remaining ones of the plurality of hardware computing nodes is less than the quorum threshold, the distributed operating system.

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having stored thereon instructions that, when executed, cause one or more processors of a network device to:

• discover, via an asynchronous object flooding protocol used for synchronizing operating system state information between a plurality of hardware computing nodes in an unordered manner, each of the plurality of hardware computing nodes;
• synchronize, responsive to discovering each of the plurality of hardware computing nodes and via the object flooding protocol, the operating system state information;
• execute, based on the synchronized operating system state information, a distributed operating system by which to provide a single execution environment in which one or more application execute across a plurality of hardware computing nodes;
• determine, via a synchronous communication protocol that ensures delivery of changes in an order the changes occur, whether one or more of the plurality of hardware computing nodes executing a distributed operating system has failed;
• determine whether remaining ones of the plurality of hardware computing nodes exceeds a quorum threshold;
• and
• restart, when the remaining ones of the plurality of hardware computing nodes is less than the quorum threshold, the distributed operating system.