Distributed Systems: Principles and Paradigms

by Andrew S. Tanenbaum, Maarten van Steen

For courses on Distributed Systems, Distributed Operating Systems, and Advanced Operating Systems focusing on distributed systems, found in departments of Computer Science, Computer Engineering and Electrical Engineering.

 

Very few textbooks today explore distributed systems in a manner appropriate for university students. In this unique text, esteemed authors Tanenbaum and van Steen provide full coverage of the field in a systematic way that can be readily used for teaching. No other text examines the underlying principles – and their applications to a wide variety of practical distributed systems – with this level of depth and clarity.

Genres: Computer Science, Technology, Technical, Programming, Software, Engineering, Computers

640 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 26, 2001

Reviews

[Martin Iotchev · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a pretty dense book, but also quite readable. I would not recommend this book as your only source for learning distributed systems. This is decent to give you an introduction, but if this is the only resource you use, there will be a huge barrier to actually grasping the information.

I would recommend pairing this book with something like:
- the MIT 6.284 Distributed Systems class lectures (at the time of writing, you can find them online https://www.youtube.com/@6.824/videos)
- the series of lectures that Martin Kleppmann (University of Cambridge) has (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...)
- Lindsey Kuper's (USCS) playlists (https://www.youtube.com/@lindseykuper...)

Trying to follow some of the algorithms and descriptions purely from this book is a big challenge. Also, the code examples in the book are not as helpful as initially proposed since they omit a lot of supporting code (ie, the snippets in the book are not complete. HOWEVER, you can download the complete source code files from the official website for the book https://www.distributed-systems.net/i... - these are more helpful, but again, I think video lectures on this material is much better).

Overall, not a bad book given the challenge the authors are undertaking, but you cannot use it alone.

[Nikita Chizhov · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am a bit conflicted. First of all - take everything i say with a grain of salt, as I only schemed the book, reading passages I found interesting or relevant to my work (which i think turned out to be about 20% of the book)

And based on reading those parts + section titles, I got the feeling that this book is about everything... but nothing is quite deep enough. Maybe this should not be surprising. The title is "distributed systems" and authors deliver exactly what they promised - overview of what is happening in everything that can be considered a distributed system. So - from threads to entire internet, from RPC calls to Paxos.

But even with the massive size of the book, there is no way everything could have been looked in depth. And in my impression nothing was. Every topic is deeper then an overview - so i would not recommend reading the entire book as introduction to most of the topics discussed. But it's also not deep enough to be a reference book. While it was laying on my desc (before i took it up and a bit after), i tried looking up some specific topics i needed in the moment. And I always had to look it up somewhere else, as it was just not detailed enough.

I also got the feeling that book was state-of-the-art... 5-10 years ago. There is Paxos, but no Raft. There are Lamport and vector clocks, but no newer research such as Interval Tree Clocks. There are all the variations on consistency models, but no CRDTs. Even though it was "thoroughly revised and extended" at 2017, it did not feel that way to me.

I am certain this book will be great to someone, but i can't think of the scenario, so - 3 / 5

[Amr Elzawawy · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best reference books I ever read.

Amount of information you gain is absolutely incredible.
Adding to that, the fact it's a read then buy book which means you get your own free e-book to read first before buying is awesome !

It was so fun and interesting to me, that I wrote a summary notes for it to refer to it's content later on in life, which am sure I'll need.

[Warren Green · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really great if you want to get into distributed systems at an academic level. Not useful for most engineers who are trying to incorporate DS into their infra stack.

[Kadir Korkmaz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a well-written book to understand distributed systems.
It is easy to understand. There is a lot of examples from real-world applications.
When it is necessary, it is giving advanced topics.

I started to read this book because I was taking Distributed Systems class in my university.

I think this is a good book to understand the nature of the distributed systems.

[Derek Barber · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is probably one of the top books out there on the subject of Distributed Systems. Co-written by Andrew S. Tanenbaum, the author of Minix, the content here is top-tier and comprehensive. My only real complaint is with the writing style itself which is fairly dry and uninspiring. Overall I would recommend the book if you are interested in this subject as I think it would be difficult to find a better book on this subject. I would love to see a future edition tackle cloud computing.

[Manjit Thapa]

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[Andrew Douma · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I have read in a long time. Free PDF available on the author's website.

[AArush Ahuja · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazing holistic overview of distributed systems as a whole, covering various aspects. A reference and explainer for many topics. The Paxos explanation, especially, was very understandble in the final chapter.
A book full of knowledge

[Ibrahim Radi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been reading this book in a Distributed Systems course at the university.
Overall I would recommend the book if you are interested in this subject as I think it would be difficult to find a better book on this subject.

[Gandalf · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bleh.

[Joel · Rating 5 out of 5]

For this third edition of "Distributed Systems," the material has been thoroughly revised and extended, integrating principles and paradigms into nine chapters: 1. Introduction 2. Architectures 3. Processes 4. Communication 5. Naming 6. Coordination 7. Replication 8. Fault tolerance 9. Security A separation has been made between basic material and more specific subjects. The latter have been organized into boxed sections, which may be skipped on first reading. To assist in understanding the more algorithmic parts, example programs in Python have been included. The examples in the book leave out many details for readability, but the complete code is available through the book's Website, hosted at www.distributed-systems.net. A personalized digital copy of the book is available for free, as well as a printed version through Amazon.com.

**

[Martin Chalupa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book provide great overview about distributed systems. It covers theory and then it uses examples from real life. Unfortunately some examples are a bit obsolete. The first 2/3 which covers theory are most valuable I think. I had some knowledge in all areas discussed within the book and I used it as a glue to tie everything together and get better overall understanding of the topic.

[Eyal Baruch · Rating 5 out of 5]

I highly recommend this book.
It provides a very good analysis of distributed systems and does deep dive into their key topics.
The authors also give reference to many research papers and provide you with resources for more in-depth study of specific topics

[Carter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well researched summary of general issues concerning the theory and. design of distributed systems. I haven't dug through the references entirely yet but those I already know of are well known works in the field.

[Salim · Rating 5 out of 5]

The second edition of Professors Tanenbaum and Steen's comprehensive introduction to distributed systems.

[Mehdi omidvar · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is professional in network for mcse

[Memycandyshop]

i will read this

[Neha]

for knowledge

[Manjit Thapa]

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[Marcin Gryszko · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must read!

[Ramya]

it is good

[Rabeena · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is very nice.

[niftynei · Rating 4 out of 5]

Miserable in terms of instruction or coherence, but the content in and of itself makes this book incredibly worthwhile for people new to Distributed Systems and looking for a survey of topics.

[Rajan Raju · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good

[Per · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://www.distributed-systems.net/i...

[Jaiprakash · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting read, specifically chapters 6 through 10. You get to know a lot of insights into the theoretical side of having a distributed system.

[Joaquín Chemile · Rating 2 out of 5]

El libro es muy elevado para mi nivel de conocimiento actual.

[Anh Mai]

good

[Sergii]

Must read for all software engineers (it is actually in recommended literature in US CS specialization).