Where do I start with distributed computing?

Question

I'm interested in learning techniques for distributed computing. As a Java developer, I'm probably willing to start with Hadoop. Could you please recommend some books/tutorials/articles to begin with?

Answer 1

Maybe you can read some papers related to MapReduce and distributed computing first, to gain a better understanding of it. Here are some I would like to recommand:

• MapReduce: Simplified Data Processing on Large Clusters, http://www.usenix.org/events/osdi04/tech/full_papers/dean/dean_html/

• Bigtable: A Distributed Storage System for Structured Data, http://www.usenix.org/events/osdi06/tech/chang/chang_html/

• Dryad: Distributed data-parallel programs from sequential building blocks, http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.824-2007/papers/isard-dryad.pdf

• The landscape of parallel computing research: A view from berkeley, http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.67.8705&rep=rep1&type=pdf

On the other hand, if you want to know better of Hadoop, maybe you can start reading Hadoop MapReduce framework source code.

Answer 2

Currently, bookwise I would check out - Hadoop A Definitive Guide. Its written by Tom White who has worked on Hadoop for a good while now, and works at Cloudera with Doug Cutting (Hadoop creator).

Also on the free side, Jimmy Lin from UMD has written a book called: Data-Intensive Text Processing with MapReduce. Here's a link to the final pre-production verison (link provided by the author on his website).