Distributed systems-BCA

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Distributed system
• A distributed system is the collection of independent computers that
appears to its user as a single coherent system
• A distributed system is a software system in which components located on
networked computers communicate and coordinate their actions by
passing messages. The components interact with each other in order to
achieve a common goal.
• This definition(first one) has several important aspects. The first one is that
a distributed system consists of components (i.e., computers) that are
autonomous. A second aspect is that users (be they people or programs)
think they are dealing with a single system. This means that one way or
the other the autonomous components need to collaborate.
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Characteristic of distributed system
• One important characteristic is that differences between the various
computers and the ways in which they communicate are mostly hidden
from users. The same holds for the internal organization of the distributed
system.
• Another important characteristic is that users and applications can
interact with a distributed system in a consistent and uniform way,
regardless of where and when interaction takes place
• distributed systems should also be relatively easy to expand or scale.
• A distributed system will normally be continuously available, although
perhaps some parts may be temporarily out of order.
• Users and applications should not notice that parts are being replaced or
fixed, or that new parts are added to serve more users or applications.

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1.2 Design goals
• Making resources accessible
• Distributed transparency
• Openness
• Scalability

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Making resource accessible
• The main goal of a distributed system is to make it easy for the users
(and applications) to access remote resources, and to share them in a
controlled and efficient way.
• E.g. printers, computers, storage facilities, data, files.
• There are many reasons for wanting to share resources. One obvious
reason is that of economics. For example, it is cheaper to let a printer
be shared by several users in a smaJl office than having to buy and
maintain a separate printer for each user.

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Distributed transparency
• An important goal of a distributed system is to hide the fact that its
processes and resources are physically distributed across multiple
computers.
• A distributed system that is able to present itself to users and
applications as if it were only a single computer system is said to be
transparent.

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Distributed transparency
• Following are the different types of distributed transparency

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openness
• Openness is concerned with extensions and improvements of
distributed systems.
• Detailed interfaces of components need to be published.
• New components have to be integrated with existing components.
• Differences in data representation of interface types on different
processors(of different vendors) have to be resolved

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Scalability
• Scalability of a system can be measured along at least three different
dimensions (Neuman, 1994).
• First ,a system can be scalable with respect to its size, meaning that
we can easily add more users and resources to the system.
• Second, a geographically scalable system is one in which the users
and resources may lie far apart.
• Third, a system can be administratively scalable, meaning that it can
still be easy to manage even if it spans many independent
administrative organizations.

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Pitfalls /false assumptions/ 8 fallacies of
distributed systems
• Peter Deutsch, at Sun Microsystems, formulated these mistakes as
the following false assumptions that everyone makes when
developing a distributed application for the first time:

• The fallacies of the distributed computing are set of common but

false assumptions made by programmer while developing the
distributed system.

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Fallacies…
1. The network is reliable.
• Network is not reliable as it may have packet loss, failure.
.

2. The network is secure.

Network is never secure as it encounters various threats.
appropriate methods, security protocols, should be taken to
secure network , infrastructure and protocols

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Fallacies….
• 3. The network is homogeneous.
• Network is not homogenous as it consists of different configurations and
protocols.
• Proprietary protocols are hard to integrate
• Standard protocols and technologies are widely accepted such as XML.
• 4. The topology does not change.
• No single topology can define the system as it is the combinations of different
topology such as star , bus , ring topology.

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Fallacies….
• 5. Latency is zero.
• Latency-the time it takes for data to pass from one point on a network to
another.
• Latency increases LAN (negligible) to WAN (high)
• 6. Bandwidth is infinite.
• Bandwidth-amount of data that can be transferred from one point to another
within a network in a specific amount of time
• Bandwidth limits the size of the information send from one node to another.

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Fallacies…
• 7. Transport cost is zero.
• Transport cost is not zero.
• The cost of setting and running network is not free.
• Cost →routers, leasing bandwidth,
• 8. There is one administrator.
• Administrators can be different including database, network, and so on and
• depending on the ability of the administrator, the number of administrator
can increase.

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Types of distributed systems
• Distributed computing system
• Cluster computing system
• Grid computing system
• Cloud computing
• Distributed information system
• Distributed pervasive system

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Cluster computing system
Cluster computing is a type of computing in which several nodes are
made to run as a single entity
All nodes on the system may set to run the same application
simultaneously.
It’s a configuration in which computers (processing elements) are set to
work together to perform tasks.

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Cluster computing…
• Cluster computing systems became popular when the
price/performance ratio of personal computers and workstations
improved.
• At a certain point, it became financially and technically attractive to
build a supercomputer using off-the-shelf technology by simply
hooking up a collection of relatively simple computers in a high-speed
network.
• In virtually all cases, cluster computing is used for parallel
programming in which a single (compute intensive) program is run in
parallel on multiple machines.

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Cluster computing….

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• Each cluster consists of a collection of compute nodes that are
controlled and accessed by means of a single master node.
• The master typically handles the allocation of nodes to a particular
parallel program, maintains a batch queue of submitted jobs, and
provides an interface for the users of the system.
• As such, the master actually runs the middleware needed for the
execution of programs and management of the cluster, while the
compute nodes often need nothing else but a standard operating
system.

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Grid (vs cluster) computing
• A characteristic feature of cluster computing is its homogeneity.
• In most cases, the computers in a cluster are largely the same, they all
have the same operating system, and are all connected through the
same network.
• In contrast, grid computing systems have a high degree of
heterogeneity: no assumptions are made concerning hardware,
operating systems, networks, administrative domains, security
policies, etc.

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Cluster vs grid computing

Cluster computing Grid computing

• Nodes must be homogeneous i.e. they should • Nodes may have different Operating systems
have same type of hardware and operating and hardwares. Machines can be
system homogeneous or heterogeneous.
• Computers in a grid contribute their unused
processing resources to the grid computing
• Computers in a cluster are dedicated to the network.
same work and perform no other task.
• Computers are located close to each other. • Computers may be located at a huge distance
from one another.
• Scheduling is controlled by a central server. • It may have servers, but mostly each node
behaves independently.
• Whole system functions as a single system. • Every node is autonomous, and anyone can
opt out anytime.

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Distributed information system
• Clients could send a request to the server for executing a specific
operation, after which a response would be sent back.
• Integration at the lowest level would allow clients to wrap a number of
requests, possibly for different servers, into a single larger request and
have it executed as a distributed transaction.
• The key idea was that all, or none of the requests would be executed.
• As applications became more sophisticated and were gradually separated
into independent components (notably distinguishing database
components from processing components), it became clear that
integration should also take place by letting applications communicate
directly with each other. This has now led to a huge industry that
concentrates on enterprise application integration (EAl).
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 Distributed Information Systems
Transaction Processing Systems
• Provide a highly structured client-server approach for database applications
• Transactions are the communication model
• Obey the ACID properties:
• Atomic: all or nothing. Each transaction either happen completely, or
not at all. And if it happens It happens in a single indivisible,
instantaneous action.
• Consistent: invariants are preserved. Transaction does not
violate system invariants
• Isolated (serializable) concurrent transactions do not interfere
with each other
• Durable: committed operations can’t be undone

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Distributed Information Systems
Enterprise Application Integration (EAI)
• Less structured than transaction-based systems
• EA components communicate directly
• Enterprise applications are things like HR data, inventory
programs, …
• May use different OSs, different DBs but need to interoperate
sometimes.

• Communication mechanisms to support this include

CORBA, Remote Procedure Call (RPC) and Remote Method
Invocation (RMI)

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Distributed Information Systems
Enterprise Application Integration

Figure: Middleware as a communication facilitator in enterprise application integration.

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Distributed pervasive system
• The distributed systems we have been discussing so far are largely
characterized by their stability: nodes are fixed and have a more or
less permanent and high-quality connection to a network.
• However, matters have become very different with the introduction
of mobile and embedded computing devices.
• We are now confronted with distributed systems in which instability is
the default behavior. The devices in these, what we refer to as
distributed pervasive systems, are often characterized by being small,
battery-powered, mobile, and having only a wireless connection,
although not all these characteristics apply to all devices.

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• An important feature of pervasive system is the general lack of
human administrative control.
• At best, devices can be configured by their owners, but otherwise
they need to automatically discover their environment and "nestle
in" as best as possible.

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• This nestling in has been made more precise by Grimm et al. (2004)
by formulating the following three requirements for
• pervasive applications:
• 1. Embrace contextual changes.
• 2. Encourage ad hoc composition.
• 3. Recognize sharing as the default.

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Assignment
1. What is distributed system? Explain characteristic of distributed
system.
2. Explain design goals of distributed system.
3. Explain 8 pitfall/fallacies that everyone makes while designing a
distributed system.
4. Explain types of distributed system.
5. Differentiate between cluster, grid and cloud computing.

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