A great book about how the operations team worked and grew from the beginning of NASA through all of the major Apollo missions. Although it's not directly related to engineering large, distributed systems, there are great lessons to learn from on how to operate complex systems in high stress situations.
http://www.amazon.com/Failure-Is-Not-Option-Mission/dp/1439148813
A great book about how the operations team worked and grew from the beginning of NASA through all of the major Apollo missions. Although it's not directly related to engineering large, distributed systems, there are great lessons to learn from on how to operate complex systems in high stress situations.