Course :Distributed Computing

Semester VI
Subject Incharge
Ms. Manisha S Patil
 Topics to be covered

Introduction

Operating System

 Basic Concepts of Distributed Operating System

 Definition

Example
 What is Operating System?
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages
computer hardware and software resources and provides
common services for computer programs.
 It is a program that acts as an interface between the user and
the computer hardware and controls the execution of all kinds
of programs.
Regular OS
When you want to do your own thing without
interacting with others.
Simple (No rules to follow).
 Evolution of Modern OS
First Generation OS
• System: Centralized OS
• Characteristics:
• Process Management
• Memory Management
• I/O Management
• File Management
• Goals:
Centralized OS
 Evolution of Modern OS

Second Generation OS
• System: Network OS(NOS)
• Characteristics:
• Remote access
• Information exchange
• Network browsing
• Goals:
Network Operating System
Network OS
Evolution of Modern OS
Third Generation OS

• System: Distributed OS(DOS)

• Characteristics:
• Global View of Computational power, file
system, name space, etc.
• Goals:
• Single computer view of multiple heterogeneous
computer systems.
Distributed OS
A Distributed system is collection of independent computers which
are connected through network
A distributed operating system is a software over a
collection of independent, networked,
communicating, and physically separate
computational nodes.
They handle jobs which are serviced by multiple CPUs.

Example to understand distributed operating

system is : Online examination system.
A Distributed Computing system is basically
a collection of processors interconnected
by a communication network in which each
processor has its own local memory and
other peripherals, and communication
between any two processors of the system
take place by message passing over
communication network.
 Examples of Distributed Systems

From the definition, Distributed Systems also looks the

same as single system.
Let us say about Google Web Server, from users
perspective while they submit the searched query, they
assume google web server as a single system.
Just visit google.com, then search.

 However, under the hood Google builds a lot of servers

even distributes in different geographical area to give you
a search result within few seconds.
So the Distributed Systems does not make any sense for
normal users.
 Web Search Engines:
• Major growth industry in the last decade.
• 10 billion per month for global number of searches.
• e.g. Google distributed infrastructure
Computer architectures consisting of interconnected, multiple
processors are
Computer architectures consisting of interconnected,
multiple processors are
basically of two types:

Tightly coupled systems.

 In these systems, there is a single system wide
primary memory (address space) that is shared by all
the processors, any communication between the
processors usually takes place through the shared
memory.
 tightly connected system are the IOPIN (the I/O-
processor interconnection network), PMIN (the
processor-memory interconnection network), and
ISIN (the interrupt-signal interconnection network).
Loosely coupled systems.
In these systems, the processors do not share
memory, and each processor has its own local
memory
The Message Transfer system (MTS) is the
interconnecting network in the loosely coupled
system.
S.NO Loosely Coupled Tightly Coupled
There is distributed memory in There is shared memory, in
1. loosely coupled multiprocessor tightly coupled
system. multiprocessor system.
Tightly coupled
Loosely Coupled Multiprocessor
2. multiprocessor system has
System has low data rate.
high data rate.
Tightly coupled
The cost of loosely coupled
3. multiprocessor system is
multiprocessor system is less.
more costly.
In loosely coupled
multiprocessor system,
While there is PMIN, IOPIN
4. modules are connected
and ISIN networks.
through Message transfer
system network.
In loosely coupled While tightly coupled
5. multiprocessor, Memory multiprocessor system have
conflicts don’t take place. memory conflicts.
Tightly Coupled
Loosely Coupled Multiprocessor
multiprocessor system has
6. system has low degree of
high degree of interaction
Distributed Computing
System Models
1. Minicomputer Model
2. Workstation Model
3. Workstation–Server Model
4. Processor–Pool Model
5. Hybrid Model
Minicomputer Model
 1. Minicomputer Model
 The minicomputer model is a simple extension of
the centralized time-sharing system.
 A distributed computing system based on this
model consists of a few minicomputers
interconnected by a communication network were
each minicomputer usually has multiple users
simultaneously logged on to it.
 Several interactive terminals are connected to each
minicomputer. Each user logged on to one specific
minicomputer has remote access to other
minicomputers.
 The network allows a user to access remote
resources that are available on some machine other
than the one on to which the user is currently
logged. The minicomputer model may be used when
2. Workstation Model
2. Workstation Model
 A distributed computing system based on
the workstation model consists of several
workstations interconnected by a
communication network.
 An organization may have several
workstations located throughout an
infrastructure were each workstation is
equipped with its own disk & serves as a
single-user computer.
 In such an environment, at any one time a
significant proportion of the workstations are
idle which results in the waste of large
amounts of CPU time.
 Therefore, the idea of the workstation
3.Workstation–Server Model
3.Workstation–Server Model
The workstation model is a network of personal workstations
having its own disk & a local file system.
 A workstation with its own local disk is usually called a diskful
workstation & a workstation without a local disk is called a
diskless workstation. Diskless workstations have become more
popular in network environments than diskful workstations,
making the workstation-server model more popular than the
workstation model for building distributed computing systems.
 A distributed computing system based on the workstation-
server model consists of a few minicomputers & several
workstations interconnected by a communication network.
 In this model, a user logs onto a workstation called his or her
home workstation. Normal computation activities required by
the user's processes are performed at the user's home
workstation, but requests for services provided by special
servers are sent to a server providing that type of service that
performs the user's requested activity & returns the result of
request processing to the user's workstation.
4.Processor-pool Model
4.Processor-pool Model
The processor-pool model is based on the
observation that most of the time a user does
not need any computing power but once in a
while the user may need a very large amount
of computing power for a short time.
 Therefore, unlike the workstation-server
model in which a processor is allocated to each
user, in processor-pool model the processors
are pooled together to be shared by the users
as needed.
 The pool of processors consists of a large
number of microcomputers & minicomputers
attached to the network.
5. Hybrid Model
 The workstation-server model has a large
number of computer users only performing
simple interactive tasks &-executing small
programs.
 In a working environment that has groups
of users who often perform jobs needing
massive computation, the processor-pool
model is more attractive & suitable.
 To combine Advantages of workstation-
server & processor-pool models, a hybrid
model can be used to build a distributed
system.
 The processors in the pool can be allocated
 ISSUES IN DESIGNING A DISTRIBUTED OPERATING
SYSTEM

Transparency

The main goals of a distributed operating system

is to make the existence of multiple computers
invisible (transparent) and provide a single system
image to its users.
1.Access Transparency
Access transparency means that users should not
need or be able to recognize whether a resource
(hardware or software) is remote or local.
2. Location Transparency
Replication Transparency

 For better performance and reliability, almost

all distributed operating systems have the
provision to create replicas (additional copies)
of files and other resources on different nodes
of the distributed system.
Failure Transparency

 Failure transparency deals with masking from

the users' partial failures in the system, such as
a communication link failure, a machine failure,
or a storage device crash.
Migration Transparency

For better performance, reliability, and

security reasons, an object that is capable of
being moved (such as a process or a file) is
often migrated from one node to another in a
distributed system.
Three important issues in achieving this goal
are as follows:
1. Migration decisions such as which object is
to be moved from where to where
should be made automatically by the system.
Concurrency Transparency

In a distributed system, multiple users who

are spatially separated use the system
concurrently.
Concurrency transparency means that each
user has a feeling that he or she is the sole
user of the system and other users do not
exist in the system.
For providing concurrency transparency, the
resource sharing mechanisms of the
distributed operating system must have the
following four properties:
1. An event-ordering property ensures that
all access requests to various system
resources are properly ordered to provide a
consistent view to all users of the system.
2. A mutual-exclusion property ensures that
at any time at most one process accesses a
shared resource, which must not be used
simultaneously by multiple processes if
Performance Transparency

 The aim of performance transparency is to

allow the system to be automatically
reconfigured to improve performance, as
loads vary dynamically in the system.
Scaling Transparency

 The aim of scaling transparency is to allow

the system to expand in scale without
disrupting the activities of the users.
Reliability

In general, distributed systems are expected

to be more reliable than centralized systems
due to the existence of multiple instances of
resources.
However, the existence of multiple instances
of the resources alone cannot increase the
system's reliability.
Rather, the distributed operating system,
which manages these resources, must be
designed properly to increase the system's
reliability by taking full advantage of this
Fault Avoidance

 Fault avoidance deals with designing the

components of the system in such a way
that the occurrence of faults is minimized.
Fault Tolerance

 Fault tolerance is the ability of a system to

continue functioning in the event of partial
system failure. The performance of the
system might be degraded due to partial
failure, but otherwise the system functions
properly.
The fault tolerance ability of a distributed
operating system are as follows:
1.Redundancy techniques.
The basic idea behind redundancy
techniques is to avoid single points of failure
by replicating critical hardware and software
components, so that if one of them fails, the
others can be used to continue.
2. Distributed control.
For better reliability, many of the particular
algorithms or protocols used in a distributed
Fault Detection and Recovery

The fault detection and recovery method of

improving reliability deals with the use of
hardware and software mechanisms to
determine the occurrence of a failure and then
to correct the system to a state acceptable for
continued operation.
1.Atomic transactions.
An atomic transaction (or just transaction for
short) is a computation consisting of a collection
of operations that take place indivisibly in the
presence of failures and concurrent