DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS

Temesgen Mekonnen

[email protected]

Fall 2021
 Chapter One

Distributed Systems
Characterization and Design

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OUTLINE

1. What is a Distributed System

2. Examples of Distributed Systems
3. Challenges (General Design Issues)
4. Basic Design Issues
5. Trends in distributed system
6. Summary

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1. WHAT IS A DISTRIBUTED SYSTEM?

Definition: A distributed system is a system in which

components located at networked computers
communicate and coordinate their actions only by
passing messages. (eg. ATM)
This definition leads to the following characterization
of distributed systems:

 Concurrency of components
 Lack of a global ‘clock’ leads synchronization (action

ordering)
 Independent failures of components

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1.1 CENTRALIZED SYSTEM
CHARACTERISTICS
 One component with non-autonomous parts
 Component shared by users all the time
 All resources accessible
 Software runs in a single process
 Single point of control
 Single point of failure

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1.2 DISTRIBUTED SYSTEM CHARACTERISTICS

 Multiple autonomous components

 Components are not shared by all users
 Resources may not be accessible
 Software runs in concurrent processes on different
processors
 Multiple points of control
 Multiple points of failure
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DISTRIBUTED SYSTEM TYPES

Fully
Control Distributed

ta
Da
Autonomous
fully cooperative
Local data,
Autonomous local directory
transaction based Not fully replicated
master directory
Master-slave Fully replicated

Homog. Homog.
special general Processors
purpose purpose
Heterog. Heterog.
special general 8
purpose purpose
2. 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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Applications of distributed systems
Distributed Systems application domains connected with networking:
Finance and commerce eCommerce e.g. Amazon and eBay, PayPal, online banking
and trading

The information society Web information and search engines, ebooks, Wikipedia;
social networking: Facebook and MySpace

Creative industries and online gaming, music and film in the home, user-generated
entertainment content, e.g. YouTube, Flickr

Healthcare health informatics, on online patient records,

monitoring patients

Education e-learning, virtual learning environments; distance learning

Transport and logistics GPS in route finding systems, map services: Google Maps,
Google Earth

Science The Grid as an enabling technology for collaboration be-

tween scientists
Environmental management sensor technology to monitor earthquakes, floods or
tsunamis
3. CHALLENGES (DESIGN ISSUES) IN DS
 What are we trying to achieve when we construct a
distributed system?

 Heterogeneity
 Openness
 Security
 Scalability
 Failure Handling
 Concurrency
 Transparency

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3.1 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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3.2 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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3.3 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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3.4 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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3.5 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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3.6 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.

 Lostupdates
 Inconsistent analysis

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3.7 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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Trends in distributed systems

 emergence of pervasive networking technology

 emergence of ubiquitous computing coupled with the desire to support user

mobility

 multimedia services

 distributed systems as utility

Pervasive networking and the modern Internet

Networking has become a pervasive resource and devices can be conected at any
time and any place
A typical portion of the Internet:
Internet scale and complexity
 Mobile and ubiquitous computing (IOT)

• laptop computers

• handheld devices (mobile phones, smart phones, tablets, GPS-enabled devices,

PDAs, video and digital cameras)

• wearable devices (smart watches, glasses, etc.)

• devices embedded in appliances (washing machines, refrigerators, cars, etc.)

 Distributed multimedia systems

• live or pre-ordered television broadcasts

• video-on-demand

• music libraries

• audio and video conferencing

 Distributed computing as a utility

• Cluster computing

• Grid computing

• Cloud computing
 Cluster: “A type of parallel or distributed processing system, which consists of
a collection of interconnected stand-alone computers cooperatively working
together as a single, integrated computing resource”

 Cloud: “A type of parallel and distributed system consisting of a collection of

interconnected and virtualised computers that are dynamically provisioned
and presented as one or more unified computing resources based on service-
level agreements established through negotiation between the service provider
and consumers”

Prime motivation for Distributed Systems: to share resources

What are the resources?

Sharing resources

What are the resources?

• Hardware

– Not every single resource is for sharing

• Data and softwares

– Databases
– Proprietary software
– Collaboration for Software production
Sharing Resources

•Different resources are handled in different ways, there are however some generic
requirements:

– Namespace for identification

– Name translation to network address
– Synchronization of multiple access
Middleware
Software layer providing:

– programming abstraction
– masking heteorogeneity of:
∗ underlying networks
∗ hardware
∗ operating systems
4. BASIC DESIGN ISSUES
 Specific issues for distributed systems:
 Naming
 Communication
 Software structure
 System architecture
 Workload allocation
 Consistency maintenance

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4.1 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
 Choiceof 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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4.2 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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4.3 SOFTWARE STRUCTURE
 Layers in centralized computer systems:

Applications
Middleware

Operating system
Computer and Network Hardware

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4.3 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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4.4 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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4.4.1 CLIENTS INVOKE INDIVIDUAL
SERVERS

Client invocation invocation Server

result result
Server

Client
Key:
Process: Computer:

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4.4.2 PEER-TO-PEER SYSTEMS
Peer 2

Peer 1
Application

Application

Sharable Peer 3
objects
Application

Peer 4

Application

Peers 5 .... N
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4.4.3 A SERVICE BY MULTIPLE SERVERS
Service

Server
Client

Server

Client
Server

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4.4.4 WEB PROXY SERVER

Client Web
server
Proxy
server

Client Web
server

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4.4.5 WEB APPLETS
a) client request results in the downloading of applet code

Client Web
Applet code server

b) client interacts with the applet

Web
Client Applet server

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4.4.6 THIN CLIENTS AND COMPUTE
SERVERS

Compute server
Network computer or PC

Thin network Application

Client Process

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5. SUMMARY
 Definitions of distributed systems and comparisons to
centralized systems.
 The characteristics of distributed systems.

 The eight forms of transparency.

 Design issues in DS.

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