Ep 26: How To Build Resilient Distributed Systems with Bestselling Author Sam Newman

<p>In this episode of Asynchronous and Unreliable, I talk to Sam Newman, author of <i>Building Microservices</i>, about his new O’Reilly book, <i>Building Resilient Distributed Systems</i>.</p><p></p><p>Distributed systems are hard — and, as they scale, they become hard in distinctly inhuman ways. Rare events stop being rare, components inevitably fail, resources run out, and the million-to-one chance starts happening nine times out of ten.</p><p>Sam’s new book is intended as a survival guide for developers who find themselves building distributed systems, deliberately or otherwise. </p><p></p><p>We talk about why microservices don’t automatically make systems more resilient; why resilience is a socio-technical property involving people, organisations and incentives as well as software; and why expecting failure can actually be the foundation of extraordinarily robust systems.</p><p></p><p>We also discuss what software can learn from aviation, railways and the internet; incident response and game days; Google’s wonderfully pragmatic early hardware; the dangers of adding complexity in pursuit of resilience; and why sometimes accepting that your system will go down is exactly the right engineering decision.</p><p></p><p>Plus rabbits, Godzilla, smart litter boxes, Terry Pratchett, and why Sam thinks we need to have a serious conversation about what the word “asynchronous” actually means.</p><p></p><p><a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.asynchronousunreliable.com/episode-26-sam-newman" target="_blank">Transcript</a></p>