---
title: "Distributed System Design Reference"
source: Microsoft Code-With Engineering Playbook
source_url: https://github.com/microsoft/code-with-engineering-playbook
licence: CC-BY-4.0
domain: engineering
subdomain: microsoft-code-with-playbook
date_added: 2026-04-25
---

# Distributed System Design Reference

Distributed systems introduce new and interesting problems that need addressing.
Software engineering as a field has dealt with these problems for years, and there are phenomenal resources available for reference when creating a new distributed system.
Some that we recommend are as follows:

* [Martin Fowler's Patterns of Distributed Systems](https://martinfowler.com/articles/patterns-of-distributed-systems/)
* [microservices.io](https://microservices.io/index.html)
* [Azure's Cloud Design Patterns](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/patterns/)
