Software Engineering
20 Sep 2026
7 min read
Tombstones Preserve Deletes Across Replicas Until Safe Garbage Collection
Tombstones Preserve Deletes Across Replicas Until Safe Garbage Collection Deleting a value from one copy of replicated data is not enough to delete it from the system. Another replica may be offline, delayed, or partitioned when the delete occurs. If the active replica simply removes the record, it also removes the evidence that a deletion happened. A stale replica can later return with an older value and make that value visible again.