We use dns_cluster, which ships with all phoenix apps. libcluster achieves the same, so whatever works. Ultimately dist erl just needs a way to reach the nodes and you call Node.connect/1 on a hostname and off to the races. It's similar to FLAME, in that the erlang VM allows sending functions over the wire as a regular transparently encoded/decoded datastructure, but in this case it's just simple built-in erlang erpc, ie `:erpc.call` underneath rather than FLAME where we are managing a pool of elastic nodes, then rpc'ing them.