Distributed Systems Crash Course

Navigating Networking, Consistency and Failures

Introduction

In the computing realm, distributed systems have indisputably emerged as a transformative paradigm, radically changing the methodologies of designing, developing, and deploying applications. The principle idea revolves around compartmentalizing complex operations into smaller, digestible components that are executed across a network of multiple machines. If you want to get a better sense of this radical change, look at all the new terms like docker, kubernetes, microservices, distributed datawarehouses like snowflake, databricks, bigquery that emerged in the past decade. None of these were possible without the advancement in the field of distributed systems. This strategic spread of tasks across multiple machines has ushered in a new era of improved scalability, superior fault tolerance, and efficient resource utilization.

In this article, my goal is to introduce this concept in abstract and give you some keywords to think about. This introduction could function as a foundation for your learning. It gives you a big picture and then it’s up to you and your working experience to put all the small pieces in place and figure out the details and implementation.

Decoding the Intricacies of Distributed Systems

A distributed system, in essence, is a conglomeration of interlinked computers, also known as nodes or hosts, operating collectively to accomplish a unified objective. These interconnected nodes orchestrate their activities to perform tasks seamlessly. The inherent distributed characteristic of such systems enables an effective division of workloads, consequently catalyzing quicker processing, improving fault tolerance, and augmenting reliability.

Let’s define some key aspects of these systems:

Scalability: Owing to their intrinsic ability to accommodate new workloads through the addition of more nodes to the network, distributed systems maintain performance even as demands intensify. Such scalability is fundamental for applications susceptible to volatile or unpredictable traffic patterns.