Parallel and Distributed Computing

Quiz #4
ID: 203333
M.Raees Khan

Question NO 1:

How does AWS handle distributed synchronization and consistency across multiple regions

and availability zones?

Amazon Web Services (AWS) employs various mechanisms and services to handle distributed
synchronization and consistency across multiple regions and availability zones (AZs) in its cloud
infrastructure. Here are some key aspects of how AWS achieves this:

Global Infrastructure: AWS operates a global network of regions and availability zones, each consisting of
multiple data centers located in different geographic locations worldwide. This distributed infrastructure
enables customers to deploy applications and services across multiple regions and AZs for high
availability and fault tolerance.

Synchronous and Asynchronous Replication: AWS offers services such as Amazon DynamoDB and
Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service) that support both synchronous and asynchronous replication
of data across multiple regions. Synchronous replication ensures strong consistency guarantees but may
introduce higher latency, while asynchronous replication provides eventual consistency with lower
latency.

Region-Level Services: Some AWS services, such as Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) and Amazon
Glacier, automatically replicate data across multiple data centers within the same region for durability
and availability. These services are designed to provide high durability and availability within a region.

Cross-Region Replication: AWS provides features and services that enable customers to replicate data
and resources across different regions for disaster recovery, data locality, and compliance requirements.
For example:

Amazon S3 offers cross-region replication, allowing customers to replicate data between S3 buckets in
different regions asynchronously.
Amazon RDS supports cross-region read replicas for database replication, enabling read scaling and
disaster recovery across regions.

Amazon DynamoDB Global Tables enable automatic and transparent replication of tables across multiple
AWS regions, providing multi-region replication with built-in conflict resolution and consistency
guarantees.

Content Delivery Network (CDN): AWS CloudFront, the AWS content delivery network (CDN), distributes
content to edge locations worldwide, reducing latency and improving performance for end users.
CloudFront caches content at edge locations and synchronizes updates across the CDN network to
ensure consistency.

Global Accelerator: AWS Global Accelerator is a service that improves the availability and performance of
applications by routing traffic through the AWS global network. Global Accelerator automatically scales
and optimizes the network path, providing consistent performance across regions and AZs.

Question NO2: Discuss the role of OpenStack components like Nova (compute), Swift (object storage),
and

Cinder (block storage) in synchronization and coordination.

OpenStack is an open-source cloud computing platform that provides a range of services for building and
managing private and public cloud infrastructure. Among its core components, Nova, Swift, and Cinder
play important roles in synchronization and coordination within the OpenStack environment, albeit in
different ways:

Nova (Compute):

Role: Nova is the compute service in OpenStack responsible for provisioning and managing virtual
machines (VMs) and other compute resources.

Synchronization and Coordination:

Instance Scheduling: Nova's scheduler component coordinates the allocation of compute resources by
selecting suitable hosts for launching VM instances based on resource availability, affinity/anti-affinity
rules, and other policies.

Resource Management: Nova's conductor service synchronizes information about compute resources
across the cloud infrastructure, ensuring consistency and availability of compute resources for launching
and managing VM instances.
Hypervisor Interaction: Nova interacts with hypervisors (e.g., KVM, VMware) to orchestrate VM lifecycle
operations such as start, stop, pause, resume, and live migration, ensuring synchronization of state
changes across compute nodes.

Swift (Object Storage):

Role: Swift is the object storage service in OpenStack designed for storing and retrieving large volumes of
unstructured data (objects).

Synchronization and Coordination:

Replication: Swift utilizes a distributed architecture with data replication across multiple storage nodes to
ensure high availability and fault tolerance. Synchronization mechanisms ensure that data replicas are
consistent and up-to-date.

Consistency Guarantees: Swift provides eventual consistency guarantees, meaning that updates to
objects are eventually propagated across replicas, ensuring synchronization while minimizing latency and
overhead.

Cinder (Block Storage):

Role: Cinder is the block storage service in OpenStack that provides persistent block-level storage
volumes for use with VM instances.

Synchronization and Coordination:

Volume Provisioning: Cinder orchestrates the provisioning and management of block storage volumes,
ensuring synchronization of volume metadata and attributes across the cloud infrastructure.

Volume Attach/Detach: Cinder coordinates the attachment and detachment of block storage volumes to
VM instances, ensuring synchronization of volume state and availability.

Snapshot Management: Cinder allows for the creation and management of volume snapshots, providing
point-in-time copies of volumes for backup, cloning, or disaster recovery purposes. Synchronization
mechanisms ensure consistency and integrity of snapshots across the cloud environment