Distributed Systems
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Distributed System Definition
According to Andrew Tannenbaum, a distributed system is a collection of independent computers that appear to their users as one computer. Specifically, there are three specific characteristics any distributed system must have:
- The computers operate concurrently
- The computers fail independently. They will fail, sooner or later.
- The computers do not share a global clock. All activities these computers perform are asynchronous with respect to the other components. This is a very important characteristics, as it imposes some essential limitations on what the distributed system can do.
As we scale and distribute the system, it seems as bad things start happening to us: distributed system are hard, and it is possible to get away without one, go for it. However, we distribute for well defined reasons, and distributing is in some cases the only way we can address the problems we have.
CAP Theorem
Distributed Storage
Relational databases.
Non-relational databases.
Distributed file systems.
Distributed Computation
Distributed Synchronization
Network Time Protocol
Vector clocks
Consensus
The consensus refers to the problem of agreeing on what is true in a distributed environment.