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Distributed Systems for Practitioners

Delve into distributed systems, exploring core principles, key algorithms, and protocols. Gain insights into design decisions, trade-offs, and practical implementation, while accessing additional theoretical resources.

Beginner

167 Lessons

9h 30min

Certificate of Completion

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Prompt

AI-POWERED

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This course includes

7 AI Prompts

12 AI Feedbacks

18 Quizzes

Course Overview

What You'll Learn

Course Content

Apply Your Skills

Course Overview

This course is about establishing the basic principles of distributed systems. It explains the scope of their functionality by discussing what they can and cannot achieve. It also covers the basic algorithms and protocols of distributed systems through easy-to-follow examples and diagrams that illustrate the thinking behind some design decisions and expand on how they can be practiced. This course also discusses some of the issues that might arise when doing so, eliminates confusion around some terms (e.g.,...Show More

What You'll Learn

Learn some of the complexities inherent in distributed systems.

Learn the key design problems in distributed systems.

Learn the key algorithms used in distributed systems.

Study the design of some real-life distributed systems.

Establish the concepts every system designer needs to know for efficient design of large-scale systems.

Learn the concepts software engineers need to know to make good use of distributed systems.

Learn some of the complexities inherent in distributed systems.

Course Content

Before Getting Started

1 Lessons

Get familiar with the basics of distributed systems and core concepts for beginners.

Introduction

Introduction to Distributed Systems

10 Lessons

Get started with the essentials of distributed systems, including benefits, challenges, and failure handling.

Getting Started

Fallacies of Distributed Computing

Difficulties Designing Distributed Systems

Measures of Correctness in Distributed Systems

System Models

Types of Failures

The Tale of Exactly-Once Semantics

Failure in the World of Distributed Systems

Stateless and Stateful Systems

Quiz

Basic Concepts and Theorems

18 Lessons

Examine key distributed systems concepts: partitioning, replication, algorithms, CAP theorem, consistency, and isolation.

Partitioning

Algorithms for Horizontal Partitioning

Replication

Primary-Backup Replication Algorithm

Multi-Primary Replication Algorithm

Quorums in Distributed Systems

Let AI Evaluate Your Understanding of Replication Algorithms

Safety Guarantees in Distributed Systems

ACID Transactions

The CAP Theorem

Consistency Models

CAP Theorem's Consistency Model

Isolation Levels and Anomalies

Prevention of Anomalies in Isolation Levels

Consistency and Isolation

Hierarchy of Models

Why All the Formalities?

Quiz

Distributed Transactions

2 Lessons

Break down complex ideas in distributed transactions and their challenges across multiple nodes.

Introduction to Distributed Transactions

Quiz

Achieving Isolation

6 Lessons

Map out the steps for achieving isolation in concurrent transactions using various control mechanisms.

Achieving Serializability

Pessimistic Concurrency Control (PCC)

Optimistic Concurrency Control (OCC)

Achieving Snapshot Isolation

Achieving Full Serializable Snapshot Isolation

Quiz

Achieving Atomicity

5 Lessons

Focus on achieving atomicity in distributed transactions through 2PC, 3PC, and quorum protocols.

Hard to Guarantee Atomicity

2-Phase Commit (2PC)

3-Phase Commit (3PC)

Quorum-Based Commit Protocol

Quiz

Concluding Distributed Transactions

2 Lessons

Test your understanding of distributed transactions, ACID guarantees, and the saga pattern.

How It All Fits Together

Long-Lived Transactions and Sagas

Consensus

12 Lessons

Learn how to use consensus algorithms like Paxos and Raft in distributed systems.

Defining the Consensus Problem

Replicated State Machine via Consensus

Distributed Transactions via Consensus

An introduction to Raft

Communication among Raft Nodes

Raft's Implementation

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

Quiz

Time

5 Lessons

Walk through time handling in distributed systems, addressing event order without global clocks.

What is Different in a Distributed System?

A Practical Perspective

A Theoretical Perspective

Logical Clocks

Quiz

10.

Order

10 Lessons

Work your way through event ordering, causality, and time synchronization in distributed systems.

Total and Partial Ordering

The Concept of Causality

Lamport Clocks

Vector Clocks

Version Vectors

Dotted Version Vectors

Distributed Snapshot Problem

Solving the Distributed Snapshot Problem

Physical and Logical Time: Closing Thoughts

Quiz

11.

Networking

9 Lessons

Grasp the fundamentals of networking layers, protocols, and their roles in distributed systems.

Introduction

The Physical Layer

The Link Layer - Services

The Link-Layer Protocols

The Network Layer

The Transport Layer

The Application Layer

Taking a Step Back

Quiz

12.

Security

7 Lessons

Take a look at key security challenges in distributed systems, including authentication, confidentiality, and integrity.

A Cryptography Primer

Symmetric/Asymmetric Encryption and Digital Signatures

Quiz

13.

Security Protocols

5 Lessons

Follow the process of ensuring secure communication and validating entities in distributed systems.

Transport Layer Security (TLS)

Public-Key Infrastructure (PKI)

Web of Trust (PGP)

OAuth Protocol

Quiz

14.

From Theory to Practice

1 Lessons

Master the steps to categorizing distributed systems and applying previously learned principles.

Introduction

15.

Case Study 1: Distributed File Systems

5 Lessons

Step through the design, operations, and consistency models of distributed file systems.

Hadoop Distributed File System and Google File System

Creating and Reading Files

Writing and Deleting Files

GFS Consistency Model

Quiz

16.

Case Study 2: Distributed Coordination Service

6 Lessons

Get started with Zookeeper for distributed coordination, ensuring reliable, efficient service management.

Coordination Service

Zookeeper

Guarantees Provided by Zookeeper

Zookeeper's ZAB Protocol

Examples of Powerful Primitives by Zookeeper API

Quiz

17.

Case Study 3: Distributed Data Stores

16 Lessons

Examine diverse distributed data stores including their architecture, performance, and consistency guarantees.

Introduction

BigTable/HBase Architecture

Appends and Read Operations in HBase

Guarantees Provided by HBase

Cassandra's Data Model

Cassandra's Cluster Internode Communication

Cassandra's Consistency Levels

Linearizability Violations in Cassandra

Linearizability Guarantees by Cassandra

Cassandra Performing Queries Efficiently

Spanner's Data Model

Spanner's Architecture

Spanner using TrueTime

Spanner Operations

FaunaDB

Quiz

18.

Case Study 4: Distributed Messaging System

5 Lessons

Break down the steps to optimize, configure, and ensure messaging guarantees in Kafka.

Introduction to Kafka

Kafka Levers

Kafka's Messaging Guarantees

Transactions, Storage Layout, and other Guarantees

Quiz

19.

Case Study 5: Distributed Cluster Management

3 Lessons

Solve problems in distributed cluster management using Kubernetes components and resource coordination.

Kubernetes

Components of Manager and Worker Nodes

Quiz

20.

Case Study 6: Distributed Ledger

5 Lessons

Focus on Corda's distributed ledger, its architecture, data model, and ensuring backwards compatibility.

Introduction to Corda

Corda's Data Model

Corda's Architecture

Backwards Compatibility provided by Corda

Quiz

21.

Case Study 7: Distributed Data Processing Systems

10 Lessons

Master distributed data processing with MapReduce, Apache Spark, and Apache Flink frameworks.

Introduction

Introduction to MapReduce

MapReduce's Manager-Worker Architecture

Introduction to Apache Spark

DAG of Stages in Apache Spark

Perks of Apache Spark

Apache Flink

Time and Watermarks in Flink

Failure Recovery in Flink

Quiz

22.

Practices & Patterns

1 Lessons

Get familiar with fundamental practices and patterns for effective distributed systems.

Introduction

23.

Communication Patterns

4 Lessons

Discover the logic behind communication patterns, data transfer, and models in distributed systems.

Creating and Parsing Data

Transfer of Data

Datastores for Asynchronous Communication

Communication Models

24.

Coordination Patterns

1 Lessons

Break apart key coordination patterns, orchestration vs. choreography, and ensure atomic operations.

Coordination Patterns

25.

Data Synchronization

3 Lessons

Grasp the fundamentals of data synchronization, event sourcing, and Change Data Capture.

Data Synchronisation

Event Sourcing

Change Data Capture (CDC)

26.

Shared-nothing Architectures

2 Lessons

Take a closer look at shared-nothing architectures, optimizing scalability, availability, and fault tolerance in distributed systems.

Sharing Problems and their Solution

Benefits and Drawbacks

27.

Distributed Locking

2 Lessons

Tackle distributed locking challenges and ensure safe operations using leases and fencing techniques.

Leases in Distributed Systems

Preventing Safety Risks in Leases

28.

Compatibility Patterns

2 Lessons

Master techniques for maintaining backwards compatibility in evolving distributed systems.

Backwards Compatibility

Maintaining Backwards Compatibility

29.

Dealing with Failure

6 Lessons

Solve problems in handling and minimizing failures in distributed systems effectively.

Failure Handling Techniques

Applying Failure Handling Techniques

Retries

Containing Impact of Failure

Backpressure

Reacting to Backpressure

30.

Distributed Tracing

1 Lessons

Get started with distributed tracing, logging execution, and optimizing performance in complex systems.

Recording Program's Execution

31.

Concluding this Course

2 Lessons

Go hands-on with performance, scalability, security, and practical applications in distributed systems.

Recap of the Course

Some More Things to Discover

Course Author

Dimos Raptis

Project

Setting up a Streaming Data Pipeline With Kafka

beginner

1 hour

Project

Setting up a Streaming Data Pipeline With Kafka

Learn to set up a real-time data streaming pipeline with Apache Kafka and Zookeeper for efficient data flow management.

beginner

1 hour

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