Understanding fault-tolerant distributed systems

We propose a small number of basic concepts that can be used to explain the architecture of fault-tolerant distributed systems and we discuss a list of architectural issues that we find useful to consider when designing or examining such systems. For each issue we present known solutions and design alternatives, we discuss their relative merits and we give examples of systems which adopt one approach or the other. The aim is to introduce some order in the complex discipline of designing and understanding fault-tolerant distributed systems.

# Distributed systems and fault tolerance # Computer Science # Distributed and Parallel Computing Systems # Software System Performance and Reliability

Flaviu Cristian (1991). "Understanding fault-tolerant distributed systems". Communications of the ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/102792.102801