1·ferd.ca
Beating the CAP Theorem Checklist
Why I added thisUse the checklist to uncover hidden assumptions about failures, clients, and networks.
A CURATED READING LIST
Distributed Systems Failure Models and Fault Tolerance
A timeout is an observation, and interpreting it requires assumptions about the system. Begin with a practical checklist of assumptions engineers commonly overlook, followed by Hamilton's operational perspective on recovery. The remaining papers make those assumptions precise: FLP establishes a limitation in the asynchronous crash-failure model, unreliable failure detectors show how additional information changes the problem, and Byzantine agreement considers participants that can send conflicting information. The reading order deliberately moves from operational questions to formal models. For each paper, record what processes and messages may do, which properties are guaranteed, and what is required for progress. Use those notes to distinguish an implementation defect from a guarantee the chosen model never offered. 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.
Curated by JakeUpdated Oct 10, 2026
Start hereBeating the CAP Theorem Checklist ↗
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2·mvdirona.com
On Designing and Deploying Internet-Scale Services
Why I added thisConnect architectural decisions to deployment, automation, recovery, and operational work.
3·groups.csail.mit.edu
Impossibility of Distributed Consensus with One Faulty Process
Why I added thisIdentify the asynchronous model and the liveness limitation established by FLP.
4·www.cs.utexas.edu
Unreliable Failure Detectors for Reliable Distributed Systems
Why I added thisStudy how completeness and accuracy assumptions change what consensus can achieve.
5·lamport.azurewebsites.net
The Byzantine Generals Problem
Why I added thisContrast crash failures with participants that can send conflicting information.
KEEP EXPLORING
More from Jake
7 resources
Advanced Distributed Systems Research Papers
Use this collection after the fundamentals, consensus, and storage paths to explore design choices that cross those boundaries. Gray's economics paper and the data-engineering rules establish a cost-oriented way to reason about placement and caching; their numerical examples are historical, not present-day purchasing advice. The next papers examine ordering throughput and wide-area replication. Eventually consistent counters provide a focused replication problem, followed by Photon and Mesa as larger systems with demanding data-processing requirements. For each resource, identify the bottleneck, the mechanism introduced to address it, and the new constraint that mechanism creates. The sequence works well for a reading group because the papers invite concrete comparisons of assumptions and evaluation methods rather than agreement on one preferred architecture. 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.
By Jake
5 resources
Logical Clocks and Ordering in Distributed Systems
Event ordering is a prerequisite for understanding replication conflicts, snapshots, and recovery. Lamport's paper establishes happens-before and explains how logical timestamps can support a total ordering. The dotted version vector examples then make causality concrete in a replicated key-value setting. Interval tree clocks extend the discussion to changing populations of participants, and the global-state survey connects local observations to consistent snapshots. Zab closes the sequence with ordering requirements in a primary-backup service. These resources belong together because they show different uses of ordering rather than presenting timestamps as a universal solution. Draw small executions with concurrent events and delayed messages, and ask what information each mechanism preserves or intentionally discards. 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.
By Jake
6 resources
Distributed Transactions and Isolation
Transaction guarantees are easiest to discuss when their scope and observable behavior are explicit. Start with an everyday service interaction that motivates asynchronous work and compensation. The PostgreSQL chapter provides concrete isolation terminology, but it is deliberately identified as historical version documentation. Strong consistency models helps distinguish ordering guarantees from transaction isolation before the HAT paper analyzes which transactional properties can coexist with high availability. Megastore and Spanner then provide two system-level case studies. This sequence suits engineers designing workflows that span records, services, or datacenters. Write a short concurrent execution for every guarantee you intend to require, and separate the atomicity of a business workflow from the semantics of an individual database transaction. 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.
By Jake
ReadingTrackA little more read. A little more remembered.