Distributed Storage Systems: Dynamo, GFS and Bigtable
Compare storage designs by starting with the workload and the guarantees each system must provide. GFS introduces a file-oriented design shaped by large data-processing jobs, and Bigtable builds a structured storage model for varied applications. Dynamo makes a useful contrast through its availability goals and treatment of conflicting versions. Megastore and Spanner bring transactional semantics into the comparison, while Mesa ends with the distinct needs of analytic data warehousing. Readers should already understand replication and basic consistency terminology. Build a comparison sheet covering partitioning, replication, failure recovery, and the responsibilities left to clients. The objective is to explain why a design fits its workload, rather than rank the papers as competing universal solutions. Curated from collections by Dan Creswell (https://dancres.github.io/Pages/) and Fred Hébert (https://ferd.ca/a-distributed-systems-reading-list.html); commentary and reading order are original.