title: Guide to Reliable Distributed Systems: Building High-Assurance Applications and Cloud-Hosted Services (Texts in Computer Science)
author:  Kenneth P Birman 
description: As an instructor who teaches courses on cloud computing and high-assurance distributed systems, I became frustrated that none of the existing textbooks seemed suitable for covering that kind of material at the introductory graduate (or advanced undergraduate) level. Accordingly, back in 1996, I wrote such a text. Over time I've revised it repeatedly and finally undertook a major rewrite during 2011. <br><br>You'll find materials online at Cornell from the spring 2012 offering of our CS5412 &quot;Cloud Computing&quot; class, and are welcome to use them. This will eventually include my comprehensive slide set for the full set of 24 lectures, as well as homework assignments and other materials.<br><br>I would also encourage you to have a look at the new Isis2 platform, for building highly assured distributed applications and running them on a large-scale, including in modern cloud systems. Isis2 is a real labor of love for me; I invested much of the past few years designing and implementing it (entirely on my own, I should add!) I plan to support it and maintain it as a free open-source platform and have included material about Isis2 into the new book.
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  Praise for Cloud Native Go
  This book does a great j ob of bringing the high level concept of “ Cloud Native”  down to earth and implemented using the
  modern computing language Go. The marriage of the two concepts works well, and the result is great inspiration.
  —Lee Atchison
  Owner, Atchison Technology LLC
  This is the ﬁrst book I’ve come across that covers such a breadth and depth of modern cloud native practices in such a
  practical way. The patterns presented here have clear examples to solve real problems that are faced by engineers on a
  daily basis.
  —Alvaro Atienza
  Site Reliability Engineer, Flatiron Health
  Matt’s expertise in the art and science of building reliable systems in a fundamentally unreliable world are clearly (and
  humorously) captured in the pages within. Join him as he introduces you to the fundamental building blocks and system
  designs that enable large scale, reliable systems to be constructed from the ephemeral and unreliable components that
  comprise the underlying