Every production system is an arrangement of a small number of reusable building blocks. The same components appear in a ride-sharing platform, a video streaming service, a payment processor, and an analytics pipeline. The components differ in configuration, scale, and operational detail — but the building blocks are the same.
This chapter defines the 26 infrastructure components that appear in the majority of production systems. For each component: what it does, what it guarantees, and what breaks if it is absent.
This is a reference chapter. Use it when you encounter a component you want to understand or when designing a system and want to check which components belong. The three annotated architectures at the end show how the components combine.
You have used most of these components. The goal here is not to introduce them but to give them precise definitions so they can be referenced consistently in design discussions, post-mortems, and documentation.