Guide to Reliable Distributed Systems

1. Front Matter

   Pages I-XXII

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2. Introduction

   • Kenneth P. Birman

   Pages 1-42

3. Computing in the Cloud

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 43-43

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   2. The Way of the Cloud

      • Kenneth P. Birman

      Pages 45-67

   3. Client Perspective

      • Kenneth P. Birman

      Pages 69-100

   4. Network Perspective

      • Kenneth P. Birman

      Pages 101-143

   5. The Structure of Cloud Data Centers

      • Kenneth P. Birman

      Pages 145-183

   6. Remote Procedure Calls and the Client/Server Model

      • Kenneth P. Birman

      Pages 185-247

   7. CORBA: The Common Object Request Broker Architecture

      • Kenneth P. Birman

      Pages 249-269

   8. System Support for Fast Client/Server Communication

      • Kenneth P. Birman

      Pages 271-284

4. Reliable Distributed Computing

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 285-286

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   2. How and Why Computer Systems Fail

      • Kenneth P. Birman

      Pages 287-299

   3. Overcoming Failures in a Distributed System

      • Kenneth P. Birman

      Pages 301-337

   4. Dynamic Membership

      • Kenneth P. Birman

      Pages 339-367

   5. Group Communication Systems

      • Kenneth P. Birman

      Pages 369-405

   6. Point to Point and Multi-group Considerations

      • Kenneth P. Birman

      Pages 407-418

   7. The Virtual Synchrony Execution Model

      • Kenneth P. Birman

      Pages 419-455

   8. Consistency in Distributed Systems

      • Kenneth P. Birman

      Pages 457-470

5. Applications of Reliability Techniques

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 471-471

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   2. Retrofitting Reliability into Complex Systems

      • Kenneth P. Birman

      Pages 473-508

This book describes the key concepts, principles and implementation options for creating high-assurance cloud computing solutions. The guide starts with a broad technical overview and basic introduction to cloud computing, looking at the overall architecture of the cloud, client systems, the modern Internet and cloud computing data centers. It then delves into the core challenges of showing how reliability and fault-tolerance can be abstracted, how the resulting questions can be solved, and how the solutions can be leveraged to create a wide range of practical cloud applications. The author’s style is practical, and the guide should be readily understandable without any special background. Concrete examples are often drawn from real-world settings to illustrate key insights. Appendices show how the most important reliability models can be formalized, describe the API of the Isis² platform, and offer more than 80 problems at varying levels of difficulty.

• Assurance
• Client/Server
• Peer to Peer
• Transactional Systems
• Web Services

• Department of Computer Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, USA

  Kenneth P. Birman

Dr. Kenneth P. Birman is an ACM Fellow and Professor of Computer Science at Cornell University.  He received the 2009 IEEE Tsukomo Kanai Award for his fundamental and practical contributions to distributed computing, fault tolerance, reliability and distributed systems management, and has authored nearly 200 journal and conference papers in the area.  Examples of settings in which his work has been applied include the communications infrastructure of the NYSE, the Swiss Stock Exchange, the US Navy's AEGIS warship, the French air-traffic control system, and a wide range of cutting edge cloud-computing products.

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