1. A computer-implemented method for executing a confined recovery in a distributed computing system having a plurality of worker systems, the worker systems executing a computation in a plurality of supersteps, the worker systems having a plurality of partitions executing a defined function during the supersteps that exchange messages with partitions of other worker systems, the method comprising: in response to a checkpoint criteria having been met at a particular superstep, transmitting a message to the worker systems to instruct them to save a current state of their assigned partitions to a persistent storage; detecting a failed worker system, and in response: determining, based on information stored in persistent storage, a previous superstep from which a recovery can be conducted and a recovery set of partitions that need to execute the defined function to recover from the failure; assigning the recovery set of partitions to a recovery worker system and instructing the recovery worker system to execute the defined function; instructing messaging worker systems with partitions not included in the recovery set to retrieve their outgoing messages sent to the failed worker system from the persistent storage and transmit them to the recovery worker system, creating a group status message indicating whether each of the messaging worker systems succeeded in transmitting its outgoing messages, and transmitting the group status message to each of the plurality of worker systems.