OUTLINE

1. What is a Distributed System

2. Examples of Distributed Systems
3. Common Characteristics
4. Basic Design Issues
5. Summary

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1. 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 2
purpose purpose
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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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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2. EXAMPLES OF DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS

 Local Area Network and Intranet

 Database Management System
 Automatic Teller Machine Network
 Internet/World-Wide Web

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2.1 LOCAL AREA NETWORK
email server Desktop
computers
print and other servers

Local area
Web server network

email server
print
File server
other servers

the rest of
the Internet
router/firewall
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2.2 DATABASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

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2.3 AUTOMATIC TELLER MACHINE
NETWORK

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2.4 INTERNET

intranet 

 ISP

backbone

satellite link

desktop computer:
server:
network link:

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2.4.1 WORLD-WIDE-WEB

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2.4.2 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. 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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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).

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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

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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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WHAT IS CLOUD COMPUTING?
 Generally speaking, cloud computing can be
thought of as anything that involves delivering
hosted services over the Internet.
 According to NIST Cloud computing is a
model for enabling ubiquitous,
convenient, on-demand network access to
a shared pool of configurable computing
resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage,
applications, and services) that can be
rapidly provisioned and released with
minimal management effort or service
provider interaction. (Special Publication
800-145)
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WHAT IT PROVIDES
 Cloud computing provides shared services as opposed to local
servers or storage resources
 Enables access to information from most web-enabled
hardware
 Allows for cost savings – reduced facility, hardware/software
investments, support

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ESSENTIAL CHARACTERISTICS
 On-demand self-service
A consumer can unilaterally provision computing capabilities, such as
server time and network storage, as needed automatically without
requiring human interaction with each service provider.
 Broad network access
Capabilities are available over the network and accessed through
standard mechanisms that promote use by heterogeneous thin or thick
client platforms (e.g., mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and
workstations).
 Resource pooling
The provider’s computing resources are pooled to serve multiple
consumers
Resources can be dynamically assigned and reassigned according to
customer demand
Customer generally may not care where the resources are physically 31
located but should be aware of risks if they are located offshore
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SERVICE MODELS

Software/
Application

Platform

Infrastructure

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 SERVICE MODELS
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
 A service model that involves outsourcing the basic
infrastructure used to support operations--including
storage, hardware, servers, and networking
components.

 The service provider owns the infrastructure

equipment and is responsible for housing, running,
and maintaining it. The customer typically pays on
a per-use basis.

 The customer uses their own platform

(Windows, Unix), and applications

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 SERVICE MODELS
Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)
 A service model that involves outsourcing the
basic infrastructure and platform (Windows,
Unix)

 PaaS facilitates deploying applications without the

cost and complexity of buying and managing the
underlying hardware and software where the
applications are hosted.

 The customer uses their own applications

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 SERVICE MODELS
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
 Also referred to as “software on demand,”
this service model involves outsourcing the
infrastructure, platform, and
software/applications.

 Typically, these services are available to the

customer for a fee, pay-as-you-go, or a no
charge model.

 The customer accesses the applications

over the internet.

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WHERE IS MY DATA?

 Data resides on servers that

the customer cannot
physically access.
 Vendors may store data
anywhere at lowest cost if
not restrained by agreement

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VIRTUALIZATION AND CLOUD
COMPUTING
DEFINITION
 Virtualization is the ability to run multiple operating systems on a
single physical system and share the underlying hardware resources*
 It is the process by which one computer hosts the appearance of
many computers.
 Virtualization is used to improve IT throughput and costs by using
physical resources as a pool from which virtual resources can be
allocated.
VIRTUALIZATION ARCHITECTURE
• A Virtual machine (VM) is an isolated runtime
environment (guest OS and applications)
• Multiple virtual systems (VMs) can run on a single
physical system
HYPERVISOR
 A hypervisor, a virtual machine manager/monitor (VMM), or
virtualization manager, is a program that allows multiple operating
systems to share a single hardware host.
 Each guest operating system appears to have the host's processor,
memory, and other resources all to itself. However, the hypervisor is
actually controlling the host processor and resources, allocating what
is needed to each operating system in turn and making sure that the
guest operating systems (called virtual machines) cannot disrupt
each other.
BENEFITS OF VIRTUALIZATION
 Sharing of resources helps cost reduction
 Isolation: Virtual machines are isolated from each other as if they are
physically separated
 Encapsulation: Virtual machines encapsulate a complete computing
environment
 Hardware Independence: Virtual machines run independently of
underlying hardware
 Portability: Virtual machines can be migrated between different
hosts.
VIRTUALIZATION IN CLOUD COMPUTING
Cloud computing takes virtualization one step further:
You don’t need to own the hardware

Resources are rented as needed from a cloud

Various providers allow creating virtual servers:

 Choose the OS and software each instance will have
 The chosen OS will run on a large server farm
 Can instantiate more virtual servers or shut down existing ones within
minutes
You get billed only for what you used
4. 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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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 Server

invocation

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.

 The basic design issues.

 Read Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 of the textbook.

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