Distributed Systems

By Dr.M.Manimaran
CONTENT

What is a Distributed System

Types of Distributed Systems
Examples of Distributed Systems
Common Characteristics
Basic Design Issues
Advantages
Disadvantages
Conclusion
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1. WHAT IS A DISTRIBUTED SYSTEM?

Definition: A distributed system is one in which components located

at networked computers communicate and coordinate their actions
only by passing messages. This definition leads to the following
characteristics of distributed systems:

Concurrency of components
Lack of a global ‘clock’
Independent failures of components

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2. TYPES OF DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS

Distributed Computing Systems.

Distributed Information Systems.
Distributed Pervasive Systems.

Distributed Computing Systems: The distributed computing

systems include the following:
Cluster computing systems
Grid computing systems
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Distributed Informative Systems: In the distributed systems,
the following forms are concentrated:
Transaction processing systems
Enterprise application integration

Distributed Pervasive Systems: Few examples of distributed

pervasive systems are as below:
Home systems
Electronic health care systems
Sensor networks

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3. EXAMPLES OF DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS

Local Area Network and Intranet

Database Management System

Automatic Teller Machine Network

Internet/World-Wide Web

Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing

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3.1 LOCAL AREA NETWORK

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3.2 DATABASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

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3.3 AUTOMATIC TELLER MACHINE NETWORK

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3.4 INTERNET

intranet %
%
% ISP

backbone

satellite link

desktop computer:
server
: link:
network

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3.4.1 WORLD-WIDE-WEB

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3.4.2 WEB SERVERS AND WEB BROWSERS
http://www.google.comlsearch?q=lyu
www.google.com

Browsers
Web servers

www.uu.se Internet
http://www.uu.se/

www.w3c.org

File system of http://www.w3c.org/Protocols/Activity.html

www.w3c.org Protocols

Activity.html
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3.5 MOBILE AND UBIQUITOUS COMPUTING

Internet

Host intranet GSM/GPRS

Wireless LAN gateway Home
intranet

Mobile
phone
Printer Laptop
Camera Host site
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4. COMMON CHARACTERISTICS

What are we trying to achieve when we construct a distributed system?

Certain common characteristics can be used to assess distributed
systems
⚫ Heterogeneity
⚫ Openness
⚫ Security
⚫ Scalability
⚫ Failure Handling
⚫ Concurrency
⚫ Transparency

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4.1 HETEROGENEITY
Variety and differences in
⚫ Networks
⚫ Computer hardware
⚫ Operating systems
⚫ Programming languages
⚫ Implementations by different developers
Middleware as software layers to provide a programming abstraction as
well as masking the heterogeneity of the underlying networks, hardware,
OS, and programming languages (e.g., CORBA).
Mobile Code to refer to code that can be sent from one computer to another
and run at the destination (e.g., Java applets and Java virtual machine).

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4.2 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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4.3 SECURITY
In a distributed system, clients send requests to access data
managed by servers, resources in the networks:
⚫ Doctors requesting records from hospitals
⚫ Users purchase products through electronic commerce
Security is required for:
⚫ Concealing the contents of messages: security and privacy
⚫ Identifying a remote user or other agent correctly (authentication)
New challenges:
⚫ Denial of service attack
⚫ Security of mobile code

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4.4 SCALABILITY
Adaptation of distributed systems to
⚫ accommodate more users
⚫ respond faster (this is the hard one)

Usually done by adding more and/or faster processors.

Components should not need to be changed when scale of a
system increases.
Design components to be scalable!

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4.5 FAILURE HANDLING (FAULT TOLERANCE)

Hardware, software and networks fail!

Distributed systems must maintain availability even at low
levels of hardware/software/network reliability.
Fault tolerance is achieved by
⚫ recovery
⚫ redundancy

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4.6 CONCURRENCY
Components in distributed systems are executed in concurrent
processes.
Components access and update shared resources (e.g.
variables, databases, device drivers).
Integrity of the system may be violated if concurrent updates
are not coordinated.
⚫ Lost updates
⚫ Inconsistent analysis

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4.7 TRANSPARENCY
Distributed systems should be perceived by users and
application programmers as a whole rather than as a collection
of cooperating components.
Transparency has different aspects.
These represent various properties that distributed systems
should have.

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4.7.1 ACCESS TRANSPARENCY

Enables local and remote information objects to be accessed using

identical operations.

Example: File system operations in NFS.

Example: Navigation in the Web.

Example: SQL Queries

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4.7.2 LOCATION TRANSPARENCY
Enables information objects to be accessed without knowledge of
their location.

Example: File system operations in NFS

Example: Pages in the Web

Example: Tables in distributed databases

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4.7.3 CONCURRENCY TRANSPARENCY
Enables several processes to operate concurrently using
shared information objects without interference between them.

Example: NFS

Example: Automatic teller machine network

Example: Database management system

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4.7.4 REPLICATION TRANSPARENCY
Enables multiple instances of information objects to be used
to increase reliability and performance without knowledge of
the replicas by users or application programs

Example: Distributed DBMS

Example: Mirroring Web Pages.

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4.7.5 FAILURE TRANSPARENCY
Enables the concealment of faults

Allows users and applications to complete their tasks despite

the failure of other components.

Example: Database Management System

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4.7.6 MOBILITY TRANSPARENCY
Allows the movement of information objects within a system
without affecting the operations of users or application
programs

Example: NFS

Example: Web Pages

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4.7.7 PERFORMANCE TRANSPARENCY
Allows the system to be reconfigured to improve performance
as loads vary.

Example: Distributed make.

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4.7.8 SCALING TRANSPARENCY
Allows the system and applications to expand in scale without
change to the system structure or the application algorithms.

Example: World-Wide-Web

Example: Distributed Database

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5. BASIC DESIGN ISSUES
General software engineering principles include rigor
and formality, separation of concerns, modularity,
abstraction, anticipation of change, …
Specific issues for distributed systems:
⚫ Naming
⚫ Communication
⚫ Software structure
⚫ System architecture
⚫ Workload allocation
⚫ Consistency maintenance
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5.1 NAMING
A name is resolved when translated into an interpretable form for
resource/object reference.
⚫ Communication identifier (IP address + port number)
⚫ Name resolution involves several translation steps
Design considerations
⚫ Choice of name space for each resource type
⚫ Name service to resolve resource names to comm. id.
Name services include naming context resolution, hierarchical
structure, resource protection

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5.2 COMMUNICATION
Separated components communicate with sending processes and
receiving processes for data transfer and synchronization.
Message passing: send and receive primitives
⚫ synchronous or blocking
⚫ asynchronous or non-blocking
⚫ Abstractions defined: channels, sockets, ports.
Communication patterns: client-server communication (e.g., RPC,
function shipping) and group multicast

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5.3 SOFTWARE STRUCTURE
Layers in centralized computer systems:

Applications
Middleware
Operating system

Computer and Network Hardware

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5.3 SOFTWARE STRUCTURE
Layers and dependencies in distributed systems:

Applications

Open
Distributed programming services
support

Open system kernel services

Computer and network hardware
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5.4 SYSTEM ARCHITECTURES
Client-Server
Peer-to-Peer
Services provided by multiple servers
Proxy servers and caches
Mobile code and mobile agents
Network computers
Thin clients and mobile devices

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5.4.1 CLIENTS INVOKE INDIVIDUAL SERVERS

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5.4.2 PEER-TO-PEER SYSTEMS

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5.4.3 A SERVICE BY MULTIPLE SERVERS

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5.4.4 WEB PROXY SERVER

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5.4.5 WEB APPLETS

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5.4.6 THIN CLIENTS AND COMPUTE SERVERS

Compute server
Network computer or PC

Thin network Application

Client Process

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6.ADVANTAGES
Sharing Data : There is a provision in the environment where user at
one site may be able to access the data residing at other sites.
Autonomy : Because of sharing data by means of data distribution
each site is able to retain a degree of control over data that are stored
locally.
Availability : If one site fails in a distributed system, the remaining
sites may be able to continue operating. Thus a failure of a site doesn't
necessarily imply the shutdown of the System.

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7. DISADVANTAGES

Software Development Cost

Greater Potential for Bugs
increased Processing Overhead

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REFERENCES
www.google.com
www.wikipedia.com
www.studymafia.org
THANKS