--- title: How to build a distributed queue in a single JSON file... description: A walkthrough of building a distributed job queue backed by a single JSON file on object storage. Starting from the simplest design — a single file with... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/brqdmdnlu twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: How to build a distributed queue in a single JSON file on object storage | daily.dev og:description: A walkthrough of building a distributed job queue backed by a single JSON file on object storage. Starting from the simplest design — a single file with... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/brqdmdnlu og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/brQDmDnlu.png og:image:alt: Post cover image og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # How to build a distributed queue in a single JSON file on object storage **[Database Daily](https://daily.dev/sources/databasedaily)** · [@bobbyiliev](https://daily.dev/bobbyiliev) · 1 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A walkthrough of building a distributed job queue backed by a single JSON file on object storage. Starting from the simplest design — a single file with compare-and-set (CAS) writes — the post incrementally adds group commit batching to handle throughput, a stateless broker to eliminate write contention, and heartbeat-based failover for high availability. The result is a FIFO, at-least-once queue that achieves 10x lower tail latency compared to the previous sharded approach, using only object storage primitives and stateless processes. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [When Kafka Is Too Much, and Redis Isn’t Enough: Building a Simpler Distributed Job Queue](https://daily.dev/posts/when-kafka-is-too-much-and-redis-isn-t-enough-building-a-simpler-distributed-job-queue-pcalseuwq) · Medium · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Your bucket is already a message queue](https://daily.dev/posts/your-bucket-is-already-a-message-queue-1szqzwfrk) · Tigris · 3 upvotes · 0 comments - [Building a Database on S3](https://daily.dev/posts/building-a-database-on-s3-z6q1mg0wr) · Metadata · 47 upvotes · 0 comments - [Building a Distributed Persistent Queue That Scaled AI Workloads 5x](https://daily.dev/posts/building-a-distributed-persistent-queue-that-scaled-ai-workloads-5x-xz1mncqkf) · Salesforce Engineering · 2 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#architecture](https://daily.dev/tags/architecture), [#distributed-systems](https://daily.dev/tags/distributed-systems) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/brqdmdnlu) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","mainEntityOfPage":"https://daily.dev/posts/brqdmdnlu","headline":"How to build a distributed queue in a single JSON file on object storage","text":"Shared: How to build a distributed queue in a single JSON file on object storage","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/brqdmdnlu","datePublished":"2026-02-24T16:20:16.513Z","dateModified":"2026-02-24T16:20:16.517Z","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Bobby Iliev","url":"https://daily.dev/bobbyiliev","image":"https://avatars3.githubusercontent.com/u/21223421?v=4","description":"DevOps, DevEx, cloud & open source\n","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Materialize","logo":"https://res.cloudinary.com/daily-now/image/upload/s--4mL2CrlK--/f_auto/v1725263959/companies/materialize"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"EndorseAction"},"userInteractionCount":82530}},"image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--CxzD6vbw--/f_auto/v1722860399/public/Placeholder%2005","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"sharedContent":{"@type":"WebPage","url":"https://api.daily.dev/r/O3MtWySHo"},"isPartOf":{"@type":"WebPage","url":"https://daily.dev/squads/databasedaily","name":"Database Daily"}} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Database Daily","item":"https://daily.dev/squads/databasedaily"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"How to build a distributed queue in a single JSON file on object storage"}]} ```