Patterns of Distributed Systems

A Patterns Approach to Designing Distributed Systems and Solving Common Implementation Problems

More and more enterprises today are dependent on cloud services from providers like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and GCP. They also use products, such as Kafka and Kubernetes, or databases, such as YugabyteDB, Cassandra, MongoDB, and Neo4j, that are distributed by nature. Because these distributed systems are inherently stateful systems, enterprise architects and developers need to be prepared for all the things that can and will go wrong when data is stored on multiple servers–from process crashes to network delays and unsynchronized clocks.

Patterns of Distributed Systems describes a set of patterns that have been observed in mainstream open-source distributed systems. Studying the common problems and the solutions that are embodied by the patterns in this guide will give you a better understanding of how these systems work, as well as a solid foundation in distributed system design principles.

Featuring real-world code examples from systems like Kafka and Kubernetes, these patterns and solutions will prepare you to confidently traverse open-source codebases and understand implementations you encounter “in the wild.”

• Review the building blocks of consensus algorithms, like Paxos and Raft, for ensuring replica consistency in distributed systems
• Understand the use of logical timestamps in databases, a fundamental concept for data versioning
• Explore commonly used partitioning schemes, with an in-depth look at intricacies of two-phase-commit protocol
• Analyze mechanisms used in implementing cluster coordination tasks, such as group membership, failure detection, and enabling robust cluster coordination
• Learn techniques for establishing effective network communication between cluster nodes.

Table of Contents

Part I: Narratives

Chapter 1: The Promise and Perils of Distributed Systems

Chapter 2: Overview of the Patterns

Part II: Patterns of Data Replication

Chapter 3: Write-Ahead Log

Chapter 4: Segmented Log

Chapter 5: Low-Water Mark

Chapter 6: Leader and Followers

Chapter 7: HeartBeat

Chapter 8: Majority Quorum

Chapter 9: Generation Clock

Chapter 10: High-Water Mark

Chapter 11: Paxos

Chapter 12: Replicated Log

Chapter 13: Singular Update Queue

Chapter 14: Request Waiting List

Chapter 15: Idempotent Receiver

Chapter 16: Follower Reads

Chapter 17: Versioned Value

Chapter 18: Version Vector

Part III: Patterns of Data Partitioning

Chapter 19: Fixed Partitions

Chapter 20: Key-Range Partitions

Chapter 21: Two-Phase Commit

Part IV: Patterns of Distributed Time

Chapter 22: Lamport Clock

Chapter 23: Hybrid Clock

Chapter 24: Clock-Bound Wait

Part V: Patterns of Cluster Management

Chapter 25: Consistent Core

Chapter 26: Lease

Chapter 27: State Watch

Chapter 28: Gossip Dissemination

Chapter 29: Emergent Leader

Part VI: Patterns of Communication between Nodes

Chapter 30: Single-Socket Channel

Chapter 31: Request Batch

Chapter 32: Request Pipeline

Who is this book for?

Software architects and developers today face a plethora of choices in distributed products and cloud services. This book helps in understanding the technical details behind these services and their documentation. It is especially useful for:

• Professionals seeking insights beyond what certifications offer, focusing on the intuitive understanding of technical principles.
• Developers needing knowledge specific enough for source-code level application yet generic enough for various scenarios.
• Readers involved in working with existing distributed systems or building their own, providing a head start through various patterns.
• Those looking for a comprehensive grasp of the underlying mechanisms and design alternatives used in different products.

Along with enterprise architects and data architects, software developers working with cloud services such as Amazon S3, Amazon EKS, and Azure CosmosDB or GCP Cloud Spanner will find this set of patterns to be indispensable.

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About the Author

Unmesh Joshi is a Principal Consultant at Thoughtworks with 22 years of industry experience. He is a software architecture enthusiast, who believes that understanding principles of distributed systems is as essential today as understanding web architecture or object-oriented programming was in the last decade. For the last two years he has been publishing patterns of distributed systems on martinfowler.com. He has also conducted various training sessions around this topic. X: @unmeshjoshi