This text identifies, examines, and illustrates fundamental concepts in computer system design that are common across operating systems, networks, database systems, distributed systems, programming languages, software engineering, security, fault tolerance, and architecture. Through carefully analyzed case studies from each of these disciplines, it demonstrates how to apply these concepts to tackle practical system design problems. To support the focus on design, the text identifies and explains abstractions that have proven successful in practice such as, remote procedure call, client/service organization, file systems, data integrity, consistency, and authenticated messages. Most computer systems are built using a handful of such abstractions. The text describes how these abstractions are implemented, demonstrates how they are used in different systems, and prepares the reader to apply them in future designs. Features: Concepts of computer system design guided by fundamental principles. Cross-cutting approach that identifies abstractions common to networking, operating systems, transaction systems, distributed systems, architecture, and software engineering. Case studies that make the abstractions real: naming (DNS and the URL); file systems (the UNIX file system); clients and services (NFS); virtualization (virtual machines); scheduling (disk arms); security (TLS). Numerous pseudocode fragments that provide concrete examples of abstract concepts. Extensive support. The authors and MIT OpenCourseWare provide on-line, free of charge, open educational resources, including additional chapters, course syllabi, board layouts and slides, lecture videos, and an archive of lecture schedules, class assignments, and design projects.

本书是一位计算机专家与一位人类学家思想碰撞的结晶，针对那些无法通过传统方法解决的系统问题，为我们介绍了分析与理解这类问题的新观点和新方法。 这是一本有关一般系统的思想与如何有效思考的著作，对各个学科领域，都有广泛的适用性，不仅仅是关于计算机的系统，还包括各种系统--人类、自然、科技。它提供了许多关于设计信息管理系统、培训程序、商业组织或都市人日常工作的应用实例。行文旁征博引，例子丰富，语言幽默风趣，涵盖了各类型系统（人类、自然以及技术系统）的设计问题。 本书曾以"关于稳定系统的设计"为题首次出版，历经数年后再次修订出版。作者利用他们在技术和社会科学上的优势，给出许多非常有启发性的见解，并把这些见解用任何人都能理解的语言表述出来。无论专业人员、普通人还是学生，都可以从本书中获得求解问题的实用方法，因此是一本可读性极强的佳作。也可以作为人文、社会、自然和工程科学等专业本科生的教材。