Introduction

Now we will examine some specific examples of the distributed systems.

Some of these systems are commercially available and widely used. Some of them have been developed and used internally in companies, but their design has been shared publicly via academic papers. The goal of the next few chapters is twofold:

• To provide an overview of the basic categories of distributed systems.
• To explain how these systems use the principles we learned so far.

However, keep in mind that some of the systems described in the next chapters might have evolved since the time of writing. As a reference, the table below contains the versions of the associated systems at the time of writing, when applicable.