Foundations of Scalable Systems

Preface

This book is built around the thesis that the ability of software systems to operate at scale is increasingly a key factor that defines success. As our world becomes more interconnected, this characteristic will only become more prevalent. Hence, the goal of this book is to provide the reader with the core knowledge of distributed and concurrent systems. It also introduces a collection of software architecture approaches and distributed technologies that can be used to build scalable systems.

Why Scalability?

The pace of change in our world is daunting. Innovations appear daily, creating new capabilities for us all to interact, conduct business, entertain ourselves…even end pandemics. The fuel for much of this innovation is software, written by veritable armies of developers in major internet companies, crack small teams in startups, and all shapes and sizes of teams in between.

Delivering software systems that are responsive to user needs is difficult enough, but it becomes an order of magnitude more difficult to do for systems at scale. We all know of systems that fail suddenly when exposed to unexpected high loads—such situations are (in the best cases) bad publicity for organizations, and at worst can result in lost jobs or destroyed companies.

Software is unlike physical systems in that it’s amorphous—its physical form (1s and 0s) bears no resemblance to its actual capabilities. We’d never expect to transform a small village of 500 people into a city of 10 million ...