Distributed Systems. Principles and Paradigms

Written in the superb writing style of other tanenbaum books, distributed systems offers students a clear explanation of the fundamental concepts of distributed operating systems. A two-part approach systematically examines the underlying principles and how they are applied to a wide variety of distributed systems. The first part dedicates one chapter to each of seven key principles of all distributed systems-communication, processes, naming, synchronization, consistency and replication, fault tolerance, and security. The second part is devoted to real-world distributed case studies. One chapter each deals with a different paradigm and describes several key systems that use that paradigm. The paradigms covered are object-based systems, distributed file systems, document-based systems, and coordination-based systems. Because this part is organized along the same seven key principles that are discussed in the first part, students not only learn how state-of-the-art real-world systems work but are also able to compare the different systems easily.