Distributed system

Ch1: introduction
Distributed system➔ is a collection of autonomous of computers interconnected
by a computer network and equipped with distributed system software to form an
integrated computing facility
Characteristics of distributed systems:
• Concurrency of components
• Independent failures of components
Processes of distributed systems:
• Execute concurrently.
• Interact in order to co-operate to achieve a common goal.
• Coordinate their activities and exchange information by means of messages
transferred over a communication network

Importance of distributed computing:

Distributed computer systems are critical for functioning of many organizations

Examples of distributed systems:

• Internet: global network of interconnected computers which communicate
through IP protocols
• Intranet
• Mobile and ubiquitous computing
• The World-Wide Web: system for publishing and accessing resources and
services across the Internet

Characteristics of Internet: (very large and heterogenous – open-ended –

connects intranets with home users)

Characteristics of intranets: (several LANs linked by backbones – provides

services – in/out communications protected by firewall - often connected to
Internet via router)

Mobile & ubiquitous computing: (Wireless LANs (WLANs) – Home intranet)

WWW: world-wide resource sharing over Internet.
• based on technologies (HTML- URL- client server)
 • open system
• can be extended, re-implemented

The challenges arising from the construction of distributed systems are:

1. Heterogeneity of its components
2. Openness: which allows components to be added or replaced.
3. Security
4. Scalability: the ability to work well when the number of users increase
5. Transparency
6. failure handling.
7. concurrency of components

Ch2,3: System Model

Difficulties and threats to Distributed systems:

• Widely varying modes of use: The component parts of systems are subject to
wide variations in workload

• Wide ranged system environments: A distributed system must accommodate

heterogeneous hardware, operating systems and networks.

• Internal problems: non-synchronized clocks, conflicting data updates, many

modes of hardware and software failure

• External threats: Attacks on data integrity and secrecy

Architectural model of distributed system: is concerned with the placement of

its parts and relationship between them. Ex: (Client-server & peer process model)

o Its goal is to meet present and likely future demands.

o Major concerns are making the system reliable, manageable, adaptable, and
cost-effective.
Architectural Model properties:
o Simplifies and abstracts the functions of individual components
o The placement of the components across a network of computers
o The interrelationship between the components

Fundamental Models: are concerned with a formal description of the properties

that are common in all the architectural models.

• There is no global time in a distributed system

• All communication between processes is achieved by means of messages

• Message communication over a computer network can be affected by delays

can surfer from a variety of failures and is vulnerable to security attacks

Interaction Model: deals with performance and the difficulty of setting of time
limits in a distributed system.

Failure Model: specification of the faults that can be exhibited by processes.

Secure Model: discusses possible threats to processes and communication

channels.

An initial simplification is achieved by classifying processes as:

o Server processes
o Client processes
o Peer processes

❖ This classification of processes identifies the responsibilities of each and

hence helps us to assess their workloads and to determine the impact of
failures in each of them.
Client-server model:
Dynamic systems can be built as variations on the client-server model.
 • Client process interact with individual server processes in a separate
computer in order to access data or resource, the server in turn may use
services of other servers

Software Architecture and Layers

Breaking up the complexity of systems by designing them through layers and
services
• Layer: a group of related functional components
• Service: functionality provided to the next layer.

A distributed service can be provided by one or more server processes, interacting

with each other and with client processes in order to maintain a consistent system.
platform: The lowest hardware and software layers
Middleware: A layer of software whose purpose is to mask heterogeneity
present in distributed systems and to provide a convenient programming model
to application developers.
System Architecture
The most evident aspect of DS design is the division of responsibilities between
system components (applications, servers, and other processes) and the placement
of the components on computers in the network.
Service provided by multiple servers
Services may be implemented as several server processes in separate host
computers.
Example: applications such as Google, parallel databases Oracle.
Proxy Servers & Caches:
• Cache is a store of recently used data objects that is closer than the objects
themselves.
• When a new object is received at a computer it is added to the cache store,
replacing some existing objects if necessary
• The purpose of proxy servers is to increase availability and performance by
reducing the time taken for a dynamic request
Peer Processes:
• Can be used very effectively.
• No central point of failure.
• No central point of control.
• Some peers will typically contribute more than others

Several variations on the client server model can be derived from the
consideration of the following factors:
• The use of mobile code and mobile agents.
• Users need for low-cost computers with limited hardware resources
that are simple to manage.
• The requirement to add and remove mobile devices in a convenient
manner.
1. Mobile code:
• Applets are a well-known and widely used example of mobile
code
• Advantage of running the downloaded code locally is that it can
give good interactive response since it does not suffer from
the delays associated with network communication.
• Mobile codes such as Applets are potential security threat, so
the browser gives applets limited access to local resources
2. Mobile Agents:
• A running program (code and data) that travels from one
computer to another in a network carrying out of an
autonomous task.
• Advantages: flexibility, savings in communications cost
• Disadvantage: Potential security threat to the resources in
computers they visit.
 3. Network Computers: It downloads its operating system and any application
software needed by the user from a remote file server, Applications are run
locally but the files are managed by a remote file server
4. Mobile devices and spontaneous networking
Design Requirements/Challenges of Distributed Systems
Performance Issues
• Responsiveness
• Throughput (Concurrency)
• Load balancing and timeliness
Quality of Service:
• Reliability
• Security
Dependability issues:
• Correctness, and fault tolerance

Ch4: Fundamental Models

Fundamental Models are concerned with the main entities in the system, how
they interact and the characteristics that affect their individual and collective
behavior.
All Architectural Models composed of processes that communicate with each
other by sending messages over a computer network.
1- Interaction Model:
Distributed systems composed of many processes interact like:
• Multiple server processes may cooperate with one another to provide
service like domain name service.
• A set of peer processes may cooperate with one another to achieve a
common goal
The processes interact by passing messages, resulting in:
• Communication (information flow)
• Coordination (synchronization and ordering of activities) between processes.
Two significant factors:
• Communication performance.
• It is impossible to maintain a single global notion of time.
The communication channel realized in a variety of ways:
• Streams
• Simple message passing over a network.
Communication over a computer network has performance characteristics:
• Latency: A delay between the start of a message’s transmission from one
process to the beginning of receipt by another
• Bandwidth: The total amount of information that can be transmitted over in
a given time
• Jitter: The variation in the time taken to deliver a series of messages
Computer clocks and timing events:
• if the clocks on all the computers in a DS are set to the same time
initially, their clocks would eventually vary quite significantly unless
corrections are applied, there are several techniques to correct time on
computer clocks (radio receivers to get readings from GPS)
Two variants of the interaction model:
• Synchronous DS -hard to achieve.
• Asynchronous DS -There is NO bounds on.
clocks cannot be synchronized perfectly across a distributed system
2- Failure Model:
In a DS, both processes and communication channels may fail.
• dropping messages: caused by lack of buffer space at the receiver or a
network transmission error
Types of failures:
1) Omission Failure ➔ class of failure and its effects at page 18
2) Arbitrary Failure ➔ class of failure and its effects at page 18
3) Timing Failure ➔ class of failure and its effects at page 19
 Masking Failures:
• It is possible to construct reliable services from components that exhibit
failures, multiple servers that hold replicas of data can continue to provide a
service when one of them crashes
• Checksums are used to mask corrupted messages
3- Security Model
The security of a DS can be achieved by:
• Securing the processes and the channels used in their interactions
• Protecting the objects that they encapsulate against unauthorized access.
Protecting Objects:
• Use access rights that define who is allowed to perform operation on an
object