Introduction to the Principles of Distributed Computing

Overview of distributed systems

Andrew Tanenbaum, a prominent computer scientist, defines a distributed system as follows:

A distributed system is a collection of independent computers that appear as a single coherent system to its users.

Whenever we refer to the term “computer” in this course, we will mean both a physical computer and a virtual machine.

Consider a physical computer with one or more virtual machines in it (which is the norm lately).

These computers cooperate to achieve a ...