US Patent 11892975 Asynchronous consistent snapshots in a distributed system

Disclosed are various embodiments for asynchronously generating consistent snapshots in a distributed system. In one embodiment, a snapshotting agent receives a respective local snapshot for individual processes in a distributed system. The respective local snapshot for a corresponding process includes a corresponding vector clock that comprises respective values indicating respective state changes in the corresponding process and other processes. The snapshotting agent determines whether a collection of the respective local snapshots for the individual processes represents a global consistent snapshot for the distributed system based at least in part on a comparison of the respective values of the corresponding vector clocks.