5 ms·

Ask HN: Best books on modern distributed systems

62 points by eatonphil 5y ago

I've read designing data intensive systems and it covered distributed systems a bit. I don't find most textbooks to be an actually good intro outside of a course setting. For example, I own Andrew Tannenbaum's Distributed System book and a few others of his. But his writing style is too dense for me to make enough progress without giving up. What other books (probably not textbooks) do you recommend on distributed systems?

rodikana 5y ago
Concurrency and Scalability for Distributed Systems is on my reading list, it's in early release but I think it's what you want https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/concurrency-and-scalability/9781098106058/ https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/concurrency-and-sc...
- delmatte 5y ago
  This sounds great !
heuroci 5y ago
This depends a bit on what you aim to get out of reading them? I liked both of the books you mentioned for different reasons personally. Do you have a set of goals you wish for as an outcome? could you say a bit more about your background as well, please?
osivertsson 5y ago
If you read https://www.worldcat.org/title/designing-data-intensive-applications-the-big-ideas-behind-reliable-scalable-and-maintainable-systems/oclc/1042165662 https://www.worldcat.org/title/designing-data-intensive-appl... you are probably ready to read research articles of basic concepts that Tanenbaum's book references. When doing my MSc in CS at Uppsala University we implemented a distributed system. We used Tanenbaum's book and while very good it was a bit terse on details. Looking up the actual research papers referenced was helpful during implementations.
bwh2 5y ago
I also enjoyed: * Release It! by Michael Nygard * System Design Interview by Alex Xu
vinay_ys 5y ago
Seek out distributed systems research papers from real-world practitioners. A quick search lead me to this nice collection: https://dancres.github.io/Pages/ https://dancres.github.io/Pages/
skrtskrt 5y ago
Designing Data Intensive Applications has treated me well, getting me through pretty much every system design interview I have had. I am going to move onto either * O'Rielly Designing Distributed Systems or * O'Rielly Architecture Patterns with Python Could anyone recommend either one? I am mainly a Python dev (with no particular love for Python), but that doesn't necessarily make me want to use the Python book more. Having code examples I can grok immediately is nice, but I also enjoy the exercise of translating concepts to code myself.
- aynyc 5y ago
  Designing Distributed Systems This is more for devop folks, rather than creating your own distributed system.
- playing_colours 5y ago
  O’Reilly Building Event-Driven Microservices is a solid book to continue. I would not recommend Architecture Patterns with Python. Some patterns there are questionable and introduce more complexity. Also, they talk about using Kafka and Service Bus in the book, but never mention an important issue you may face in real implementation: consistency in updating both a message bus and a database that usually is addressed with Outbox pattern https://microservices.io/patterns/data/transactional-outbox.html https://microservices.io/patterns/data/transactional-outbox....
  - skrtskrt 5y ago
    Thank you!
  - skrtskrt 5y ago
    What do you think of avoiding implementing Outbox by just having things like Kafka Connect subscribe to the table changes in the database?
    - zeroc8 5y ago
      One thing would be that you then are just syncing database as opposed to sending domain events, aren't you?
devinmcafee 5y ago
While not a book: I took Udi Dahan's Advanced distributed systems design course in 2018 and can't recommend it enough: https://particular.net/adsd https://particular.net/adsd I'm pretty sure there is an online course available which you can watch, so it's a slightly different medium but may be a nice change of pace from reading. The course was really informative for me and has really been paying dividends in my career.
fisheuler 5y ago
Ken Birman's (https://www.cs.cornell.edu/ken/ https://www.cs.cornell.edu/ken/)' book "Guide to Reliable Distributed Systems: Building High-Assurance Applications and Cloud-Hosted Services" He even give a course about topics in cloud computing : https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs5412/2021sp/ https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs5412/2021sp/ Another interesting course about distributed system is from MIT https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.824/schedule.html https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.824/schedule.html
rvprasad 5y ago
While they are not solely focused on distributed systems, these five books -- https://rvprasad.medium.com/books-about-designing-systems-of-scale-295a7a91997c https://rvprasad.medium.com/books-about-designing-systems-of... -- cover different aspects of designing systems of scale, which are most often distributed systems.

62 points by eatonphil 5y ago

rodikana 5y ago

Concurrency and Scalability for Distributed Systems is on my reading list, it's in early release but I think it's what you want https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/concurrency-and-scalability/9781098106058/ https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/concurrency-and-sc...

delmatte 5y ago
This sounds great !

heuroci 5y ago

This depends a bit on what you aim to get out of reading them? I liked both of the books you mentioned for different reasons personally. Do you have a set of goals you wish for as an outcome? could you say a bit more about your background as well, please?

osivertsson 5y ago

If you read https://www.worldcat.org/title/designing-data-intensive-applications-the-big-ideas-behind-reliable-scalable-and-maintainable-systems/oclc/1042165662 https://www.worldcat.org/title/designing-data-intensive-appl... you are probably ready to read research articles of basic concepts that Tanenbaum's book references. When doing my MSc in CS at Uppsala University we implemented a distributed system. We used Tanenbaum's book and while very good it was a bit terse on details. Looking up the actual research papers referenced was helpful during implementations.

bwh2 5y ago

I also enjoyed: * Release It! by Michael Nygard * System Design Interview by Alex Xu

vinay_ys 5y ago

Seek out distributed systems research papers from real-world practitioners. A quick search lead me to this nice collection: https://dancres.github.io/Pages/ https://dancres.github.io/Pages/

skrtskrt 5y ago

Designing Data Intensive Applications has treated me well, getting me through pretty much every system design interview I have had. I am going to move onto either * O'Rielly Designing Distributed Systems or * O'Rielly Architecture Patterns with Python Could anyone recommend either one? I am mainly a Python dev (with no particular love for Python), but that doesn't necessarily make me want to use the Python book more. Having code examples I can grok immediately is nice, but I also enjoy the exercise of translating concepts to code myself.

aynyc 5y ago
Designing Distributed Systems This is more for devop folks, rather than creating your own distributed system.
playing_colours 5y ago
O’Reilly Building Event-Driven Microservices is a solid book to continue. I would not recommend Architecture Patterns with Python. Some patterns there are questionable and introduce more complexity. Also, they talk about using Kafka and Service Bus in the book, but never mention an important issue you may face in real implementation: consistency in updating both a message bus and a database that usually is addressed with Outbox pattern https://microservices.io/patterns/data/transactional-outbox.html https://microservices.io/patterns/data/transactional-outbox....
- skrtskrt 5y ago
  Thank you!
- skrtskrt 5y ago
  What do you think of avoiding implementing Outbox by just having things like Kafka Connect subscribe to the table changes in the database?
  - zeroc8 5y ago
    One thing would be that you then are just syncing database as opposed to sending domain events, aren't you?

devinmcafee 5y ago

While not a book: I took Udi Dahan's Advanced distributed systems design course in 2018 and can't recommend it enough: https://particular.net/adsd https://particular.net/adsd I'm pretty sure there is an online course available which you can watch, so it's a slightly different medium but may be a nice change of pace from reading. The course was really informative for me and has really been paying dividends in my career.

fisheuler 5y ago

Ken Birman's (https://www.cs.cornell.edu/ken/ https://www.cs.cornell.edu/ken/)' book "Guide to Reliable Distributed Systems: Building High-Assurance Applications and Cloud-Hosted Services" He even give a course about topics in cloud computing : https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs5412/2021sp/ https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs5412/2021sp/ Another interesting course about distributed system is from MIT https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.824/schedule.html https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.824/schedule.html

rvprasad 5y ago

While they are not solely focused on distributed systems, these five books -- https://rvprasad.medium.com/books-about-designing-systems-of-scale-295a7a91997c https://rvprasad.medium.com/books-about-designing-systems-of... -- cover different aspects of designing systems of scale, which are most often distributed systems.