Name: Manasi Sainis

Roll no.:-13

Q1: Explain main characteristic of Distributed system. [4]

Answer :
A distributed system is a system in which components are located on different networked
computers, which can communicate and coordinate their actions by passing messages to one
another. The components interact with one another in order to achieve a common goal.

1. Resource Sharing
Resource sharing means that the existing resources in a distributed system can be accessed or
remotely accessed across multiple computers in the system. Computers in distributed systems
shares resources like hardware (disks and printers), software (files, windows and data objects) and
data. Hardware resources are shared for reductions in cost and convenience. Data is shared for
consistency and exchange of information.

2. Heterogeneity
In distributed systems components can have variety and differences in Networks, Computer
hardware, Operating systems, Programming languages and implementations by different
developers.

3. Openness
Openness is concerned with extensions and improvements of distributed systems. The distributed
system must be open in terms of Hardware and Softwares. In order to make a distributed system
open,
1. A detailed and well-defined interface of components must be published.
2. Should standardize the interfaces of components
3. The new component must be easily integrated with existing components

4. Concurrency
Concurrency is a property of a system representing the fact that multiple activities are executed at
the same time. The concurrent execution of activities takes place in different components running
on multiple machines as part of a distributed system. In addition, these activities may perform some
kind of interactions among them. Concurrency reduces the latency and increases the throughput of
the distributed system.

5. Scalability
Scalability is mainly concerned about how the distributed system handles the growth as the number
of users for the system increases. Mostly we scale the distributed system by adding more computers
in the network. Components should not need to be changed when we scale the system. Components
should be designed in such a way that it is scalable.

6. Fault Tolerance
In a distributed system hardware, software, network anything can fail. The system must be designed
in such a way that it is available all the time even after something has failed.

7. Transparency
Distributed systems should be perceived by users and application programmers as a whole rather
than as a collection of cooperating components. Transparency can be of various types like access,
location, concurrency, replication, etc.

Q2: State and explain advantages of distributed system over traditional system.
[6]

Answer :

Advantages of Distributed System :

 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.
 In distributed system there is a global database administrator responsible for the entire
system. A part of global data base administrator responsibilities is delegated to local data
base administrator for each site. Depending upon the design of distributed database
 Each local database administrator may have different degree of local autonomy.
 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.

Q3: Explain resource Management in detail. [6]

Answer:
 Resource management is the process of pre-planning, scheduling, and allocating your
resources to maximize efficiency.
 A resource is anything that is needed to execute a task or project — this can be the skill sets
of employees or the adoption of software. For example, if you’re planning an event, a few
resources include scheduling out staff for the event, planning what vendors to use for
promotional materials, investing software that allows attendees to register, and budgeting for
everything from giveaways to catering.

 Advantages :
1. Prevents burnout: Effective resource management allows you to avoid “overallocation” or
“dependency” of resources by gaining insight into your team’s workload.
2. Provides a safety net: Let’s say the project was not successful due to lack of resources (it
happens). Resource planning and management establishes that you did everything you could
with what you had.
3. Builds transparency: Other teams can gain visibility into your team’s bandwidth, and plan
accordingly if your team is at maximum capacity or available to take on new projects.
4. Measures efficiency: With a high-level understanding of what’s needed to manage and
execute an upcoming project, you can effectively plan and measure ROI.
5. Avoids unforeseen hiccups: By understanding your resources upfront and planning how to
use them, you can troubleshoot gaps or problems before they happen.

 Resource Management Techniques :

1. Resource allocation helps you get the most from your available resources. Based on
team members’ skills and capacity, resource allocation is the process of tackling projects
using the resources you have at your disposal in the most efficient manner possible.
To get a clear view into allocation, project managers will often use resource allocation
reports. These can give anywhere from a high-level view to a detailed run down of resource
availability — helping you avoid schedule delays and going over budget. The better the
reporting capabilities at your disposal, the more transparency and efficiency you will have
over your projects.
2. Resource leveling is another type of resource management technique. This technique
aims to discover underused or inefficiently used resources within the organization and work
them to your advantage. An example of resource leveling is having a content writer who has
experience in graphic design help out the design team by taking on small content tasks that
require design work. If a team member can flex their design skills, the design team won’t
need to hire a freelancer if they suddenly get flooded with design requests

3. Resource Forecasting : Having a resource management plan is critical to optimizing

people, materials, and budget efficiency. Resource forecasting allows you to predict your
future resource requirements before a project begins. During the planning stages of a project,
resource forecasting determines the project’s scope, possible constraints, unforeseen costs,
and potential risks.
 To make these predictions, project managers must be extremely familiar with the project
lifecycle and objectives, and have an overview of available resources within the
organization. Project management software provides this level of visibility, as well as easy
access to your projects and resources all in one place.

Q.4 List and explain motivations behind the development of distributed system.
[7]

Answer:
A distributed system is a collection of loosely coupled processors interconnected by a
communication network. From the point of view of a specific processor in a distributed system, the
rest of the processors and their respective resources are remote, whereas its own resources are local.
The processors in a distributed system may vary in size and function. They may include small
microprocessors, workstations, minicomputers, and large general-purpose computer systems.
These processors are referred to by a number of names, such as sites, nodes, computers, machines,
and hosts, depending on the context in which they are mentioned. We mainly use site to indicate the
location of a machine and host to refer to a specific system at a site. Generally, one host at one site,
the server, has a resource that another host at another site, the client (or user), would like to use.
There are four major reasons for building distributed systems:

Resource Sharing
If a number of different sites (with different capabilities) are connected to one another, then a user at
one site may be able to use the resources available at another. For example, a user at site A may be
using a laser printer located at site B. Meanwhile, a user at B may access a file that resides at A. In
general, resource sharing in a distributed system provides mechanisms for sharing files at remote
sites, processing information in a distributed database, printing files at remote sites, using remote
specialized hardware devices (such as a high-speed array processor), and performing other
operations

Reliability
If one site fails in a distributed system, the remaining sites can continue operating, giving the
system better reliability If the system is composed of multiple large autonomous installations (that
is, general-purpose computers), the failure of one of them should not affect the rest. If, however, the
system is composed of small machines, each of which is responsible for some crucial system
function (such as terminal character I/O or the file system), then a single failure may halt the
operation of the whole system. In general, with enough redundancy (in both hardware and data), the
system can continue operation, even if some of its sites have failed.
The failure of a site must be detected by the system, and appropriate action may be needed to
recover from the failure. The system must no longer use the services of that site. In addition, if the
function of the failed site can be taken over by another site, the system must ensure that the transfer
of function occurs correctly. Finally, when the failed site recovers or is repaired, mechanisms must
be available to integrate it back into the system smoothly. As we shall see in Chapters 17 and 18,
these actions present difficult problems that have many possible solutions.

Communication
When several sites are connected to one another by a communication network, the users at different
sites have the opportunity to exchange information. At a low level, messages are passed between
systems, much as messages are passed between processes in the single-computer message system
discussed in Section 3.4. Given message passing, all the higher-level functionality found in
standalone systems can be expanded to encompass the distributed system. Such functions include
file transfer, login, mail, and remote procedure calls (RPCs).

Q.5 Draw and explain the architecture of distributed system. [7]

Answer:
Q.6 Discuss the issues in design of distributed systems. [8]/[9]
Issues in designing distributed systems:
1. Heterogeneity
The Internet enables users to access services and run applications over a heterogeneous collection of
computers and networks.Internet consists of many different sorts of network their differences are
masked by the fact that all of the computers attached to them use the Internet protocols to com-
municate with one another.For eg., a computer attached to an Ethernet has an implementation of the
Internet protocols over the Ethernet, whereas a computer on a different sort of network will need an
implementation of the Internet protocols for that network.
2. Openness
The openness of a computer system is the characteristic that determines whether the system can be
extended and re-implemented in various ways.The openness of distributed systems is determined
primarily by the degree to which new resource-sharing services can be added and be made available
for use by a variety of client programs.
3. Security
Many of the information resources that are made available and maintained in distributed systems
have a high intrinsic value to their users.Their security is therefore of considerable importance. Se-
curity for information resources has three components: confidentiality, integrity, and availability.
4. Scalability
Distributed systems operate effectively and efficiently at many different scales, ranging from a
small intranet to the Internet. A system is described as scalable if it will remain effective when there
is a significant increase in the number of resources and the number of users.
5. Failure handling
Computer systems sometimes fail. When faults occur in hardware or software, programs may pro-
duce incorrect results or may stop before they have completed the intended computation. Failures in
a distributed system are partial – that is, some components fail while others continue to function.
Therefore the handling of failures is particularly difficult.
6. Concurrency
Both services and applications provide resources that can be shared by clients in a distributed sys-
tem. There is therefore a possibility that several clients will attempt to access a shared resource at
the same time. Object that represents a shared resource in a distributed system must be responsible
for ensuring that it operates correctly in a concurrent environment. This applies not only to servers
but also to objects in applications. Therefore any programmer who takes an implementation of an
object that was not intended for use in a distributed system must do whatever is necessary to make it
safe in a concurrent environment.
7. Transparency
Transparency can be achieved at two different levels. Easiest to do is to hide the distribution from
the users. The concept of transparency can be applied to several aspects of a distributed system.
a) Location transparency: The users cannot tell where resources are located
b) Migration transparency: Resources can move at will without changing their names
c) Replication transparency: The users cannot tell how many copies exist.
d) Concurrency transparency: Multiple users can share resources automatically.
e) Parallelism transparency: Activities can happen in parallel without users knowing.
8. Quality of service
Once users are provided with the functionality that they require of a service, such as the file service
in a distributed system, we can go on to ask about the quality of the service provided. The main
nonfunctional properties of systems that affect the quality of the service experienced by clients and
users are reliability, security and performance. Adaptability to meet changing system configurations
and resource availability has been recognized as a further important aspect of service quality.
9. Reliability
One of the original goals of building distributed systems was to make them more reliable than sin-
gle-processor systems. The idea is that if a machine goes down, some other machine takes over the
job. A highly reliable system must be highly available, but that is not enough. Data entrusted to the
system must not be lost or garbled in any way, and if files are stored redundantly on multiple serv-
ers, all the copies must be kept consistent. In general, the more copies that are kept, the better the
availability, but the greater the chance that they will be inconsistent, especially if updates are fre-
quent.
10. Performance
Always the hidden data in the background is the issue of performance. Building a transparent, flexi-
ble, reliable distributed system, more important lies in its performance. In particular, when running
a particular application on a distributed system, it should not be appreciably worse than running the
same application on a single processor. Unfortunately, achieving this is easier said than done.

Q.7 What is distributed system? Explain the advantages of distributed system?

[8]
Answer:
A distributed system contains multiple nodes that are physically separate but linked together using
the network. All the nodes in this system communicate with each other and handle processes in tan-
dem. Each of these nodes contains a small part of the distributed operating system software.
A diagram to better explain the distributed system is:

Advantages of Distributed Systems

Some advantages of Distributed Systems are as follows:
 All the nodes in the distributed system are connected to each other. So nodes can easily
share data with other nodes.
 More nodes can easily be added to the distributed system i.e. it can be scaled as required.
 Failure of one node does not lead to the failure of the entire distributed system. Other nodes
can still communicate with each other.
 Resources like printers can be shared with multiple nodes rather than being restricted to just
one.