Learning Serverless

Chapter 1. Distributed Systems

We’ll begin our journey through serverless by talking about distributed systems. Before we jump into definitions and examples, what do you need to know about distributed systems to be effective with serverless? When you develop an application, you have to make a large number of assumptions. Some may be as simple as knowing that one step will occur after another. Others may be far more complex. Distributed systems will tear apart all your assumptions about the environment in which your code will run and how it will operate. When you develop for a single computer, many of the harsh realities of the physical world are abstracted away. As soon as you start building a system that resides on multiple computers, all of those realities suddenly surface—though they might not be obvious.

This chapter will first offer a broad overview to better understand what you have signed up for.

If you do not have experience developing backend systems, my goal is to explain what has changed about your world. But even if you have experience, you will find value here: distributed systems can bring out the pessimism and cynicism even in experienced software engineers and system administrators. We’ll talk about what can go wrong and what you can do about it.

What Is a Distributed System?

A distributed system is any system where the individual components are separated and communicate over a network. A distributed system can be part of a larger or smaller distributed system. ...