1. A computer-implemented method of deploying a membership of distributed compute nodes in a distributed computing system hosting replicated state machines, comprising; selecting distributed compute nodes to be part of a membership of distributed compute nodes to be deployed; creating a membership task identifying a membership creator node as the distributed compute node that is creating the membership to be deployed and comprising a membership target identifying at least one distributed compute node of the distributed computing system that is to become a member of the membership; persisting the created membership task in a persistent store; creating a beacon configured to send, over a computer network, a create membership message to each distributed compute node identified in the membership target, the create membership message comprising at least an identity of the membership task and an identification of the membership to be deployed; and upon the membership creator node receiving a response from a distributed compute node in the membership target: removing the distributed compute node from which the response was received from the beacon; and deploying the membership when a response has been received from each of the distributed compute nodes identified in the membership target, and if the membership creator node fails before it has received responses from each of the distributed compute nodes identified in the membership target, restarting the membership task and resending duplicate create membership messages to at least one of the distributed compute nodes identified in the membership target.