This paper presents a study of the two-stream instability of an electron beam propagating in a finite-size plasma placed between two electrodes. It is shown that the growth rate in such a system is much smaller than that of an infinite plasma or a finite size plasma with periodic boundary conditions. Even if the width of the plasma matches the resonance condition for a standing wave, a spatially growing wave is excited instead with the growth rate small compared to that of the standing wave in a periodic system. The approximate expression for this growth rate is $gamma approx (1/13)omega_{pe}(n_{b}/n_{p})(Lomega_{pe}/v_{b})ln (Lomega_{pe}/v_{b})[ 1-0.18cos ( Lomega_{pe}/v_{b}+{pi }/{2}) ]$, where $omega_{pe}$ is the electron plasma frequency, $n_{b}$ and $n_{p}$ are the beam and the plasma densities, respectively, $v_{b}$ is the beam velocity, and $L$ is the plasma width. The frequency, wave number and the spatial and temporal growth rates as functions of the plasma size exhibit band structure. The amplitude of saturation of the instability depends on the system length, not on the beam current. For short systems, the amplitude may exceed values predicted for infinite plasmas by more than an order of magnitude.
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