Distributed Systems and the Client-Server Model Flashcards
What is a distributed system?
A system where hardware or software components located at networked computers communicate and coordinate their actions only by passing messages
What is the main purpose of distributed systems?
Resource sharing
Give examples of this purpose
Physical resources - printers, disks, computers
Data resources - files, documents, databases, computers
Computational /algorithmic resources - search engines, machine-learning algorithms
What is a service?
A distinct part of a computer that manages a collection of related resources and presents their functionality to users and applications
How do services work?
They run on the specific machine which physically hosts the managed resources
They provide a specific and controlled interface - usually over a network to the resources it manages
Describe the relationship between clients and servers in distributed systems
Many distributed systems consist of only clients making requests to servers to access or manipulate the resources managed by that service
What are some examples of these services?
Office 365 - word processor/document
Moodle - learning resources, assignments
Teams, Zoom, Skype - other people/remote mics, speakers, cameras, screens
What are the entities that are communicating in the distributed system?
OS processes
What communication paradigm is used?
Direct, request-response communication
What roles and responsibilities are included in distributed systems?
Client and server
What is the placement of these entities (how are they mapped onto the physical distributed infrastructure)?
User desktop and cloud server
