A Distributed Systems Reading List

Introduction

I often argue that the toughest thing about distributed systems is changing the way you think. The below is a collection of material I've found useful for motivating these changes.

The Google Infrastructure

Current "rocket science" in distributed systems.

Experience at MySpace

One of the larger websites out there with a high write load which is not the norm (most are read dominated).

  • http://www.baselinemag.com/print_article2/0,1217,a=198614,00.asp
  • Mix06 - Running a Megasite on Microsoft Technologies - Mix 06 Sessions/
  • http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid5_gci1232063,00.html

    • eBay

    Interesting they dumped most of J2EE and use a lot of db partitioning. Check out their site upgrade tool as well.

    Adam Bosworth

    Broad vision, way of the future type stuff.

    Amazon

    Somewhat about the technology but more interesting is the culture and organization they've created to work with it.

    Thought Provokers

    Ramblings that make you think about the way you design. Not everything can be solved with big servers, databases and transactions.