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Course Description
The course introduces basic knowledge to give an understanding how modern distributed systems operate. The focus of the course is on distributed algorithms and on practical aspects that should be considered when designing and implementing real systems. Some topics covered during the course are causality and logical clocks, synchronization and coordination algorithm transactions and replication, and end-to-end system design. In addition, the course explores recent trends exemplified by current highly available and reliable distributed systems.
Course Objectives
The objective of the course is to make familiar with different aspect of the distributed system, middleware, system level support and different issues in designing distributed algorithms and finally systems.
Course Contents
1.1 Characteristics
1.2 Design Goals
1.3 Types of Distributed Systems
1.4 Case Study: The World Wide Web
2.1 Architectural Styles
2.2 Middleware organization
2.3 System Architecture
2.4 Example Architectures
3.1 Threads
3.2 Virtualization
3.3 Clients
3.4 Servers
3.5 Code Migration
4.1 Foundations
4.2 Remote Procedure Call
4.3 Message-Oriented Communication
4.4 Multicast Communication
4.5 Case Study: Java RMI and Message Passing Interface (MPI)
5.1 Name Identifiers
5.2 Structured Naming
5.3 Attribute-based naming
5.4 Case Study: The Global Name Service
6.1 Clock Synchronization
6.2 Logical Clocks
6.3 Mutual Exclusion
6.4 Election Algorithm
6.5 Location System
6.6 Distributed Event Matching
6.7 Gossip-based coordination
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Data-centric consistency models
7.3 Client-centric consistency models
7.4 Replica management
7.5 Consistency protocols
7.6 Caching and Replication in Web
8.1 Introduction to fault tolerance
8.2 Process resilience
8.3 Reliable client-server communication
8.4 Reliable group communication
8.5 Distributed commit
8.6 Recovery
9.1 Introduction to security
9.2 Secure channels
9.3 Access control
9.4 Secure naming
9.5 Security Management
Teaching Methods
The teaching faculties are expected to create environment where students can update and upgrade themselves with the current scenario of computing and information technology with the help of topics listed in the syllabus. The general teaching pedagogy that can be followed by teaching faculties for this course includes class lectures, laboratory activity, group discussions, case studies, guest lectures, research work, project work, assignments (Theoretical and Practical), and written and verbal examinations.
References
- A.S. Tanenbaum, M. VanSteen, "Distributed Systems", Pearson Education.
- George Coulouris, Jean Dollimore, Tim Kindberg, "Distributed Systems Concepts and Design", Third Edition, Pearson Education.
- Mukesh Singhal, "Advanced Concepts in Operating Systems", McGraw-Hill Series in Computer Science.
- Ajay D. Kalemkalyani, Mukesh Singhal, "Distributed Computing: Principles, Algorithms, and Systems", Cambridge University Press
- Christian Cachin, Rachid Guerraoui, Luis, "Introduction to Reliable and Secure Distributed Programming", Springer