How to build a Distributed System?
Last Updated :
08 May, 2024
A distributed system is a system where there are separate components (nodes, servers, etc.) that are integrally linked to each other to perform the operations. These systems will be created for the capability to scale, resilience, and fault tolerance. They communicate and also collaborate their operations through networks that enable the processing, storing, and sharing of resources in a decentralized manner.
Important Topics for how to build a Distributed System
Key Concepts for Distributed Systems
Below are some key concepts for distributed systems:
- Nodes and Network: The building bricks of distributed systems consist of individual nodes and the communication network, which passes the nodes of the system.
- Decentralization: Responsibility and tasks are shared by several components.
- Fault Tolerance: Systems should be set up in such a manner as to maintain performance even when there is failure of some components.
- Scalability: The possibility of raising the processing power by attaching more parts.
The distributed systems design is a collection of basic rules that are aimed at maintaining the systems' operability, efficiency, and scalability.
- Loose Coupling: Features should communicate with each other through a clearly established interface, that ultimately is flexible.
- High Cohesion: Common tasks should be performed in the same component.
- Redundancy and Replication: having backup copies of data or resources to ensure availability, while replication involves creating multiple copies of data across different nodes for improved performance and fault tolerance.
- Partitioning: Separating workloads and data across various combined components so as to achieve higher scalability.
- Autonomy: Components need to be as separate as much as possible to have autonomous designs.
Architectural Patterns for Distributed Systems
Selecting proper architecture is determinative to how a distributed system is going to perform. Some common architectural patterns are:
- Client-Server: The clients ask resources or services from a centralized server.
- Peer-to-Peer: Every node has the dual role of both a client and a server.
- Microservices: Instant, small and independent services that communicate among themselves via APIs.
- Event-Driven: Items interact via events by the means of synchronous interaction.
- Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA): Designing software components as reusable services that communicate over a network and promoting flexibility.
Communication protocol determines that how varied elements in the distributed system exchanges and transmit data in between them. Some communication protocols used in distributed systems are:
- HTTP/HTTPS: Common protocols for web communication, HTTP being the standard and HTTPS adding security, often simplified by REST API for building web services.
- Remote Procedure Calls (RPCs): Using fast communication methods for system interaction, facilitating rapid data exchange
- gRPC: Efficient RPC (Remote Procedure Call) framework supported by the open-source community.
- Message Queues: Live communication queues (like RabbitMQ, Kafka) for asynchronous data transfer.
- WebSockets: Protocol enabling real-time, bidirectional communication between clients and servers.
Data Management Strategies for Distributed Systems
The activity of handling data in the distributed system is mainly associated with a set of certain problems, that include consistency, replication, and partitioning. Some key considerations include:
- Replication: Replicated data over multiple nodes for fight redundancy.
- Partitioning/Sharding: Data Traversing Multiple Nodes to Overcome Scalability Issues.
- Consistency Models: When applied to the problem that arises due to the conflict between coefficient of consistency and scalability, consistency is the star (ranging from strong consistency (strict data consistency) to eventual consistency (relaxed constraints for the sake of scalability )).
- Distributed Transactions: The approaches 2PC and Paxos/Raft can be applied together for both consistency and consensus.
- Data Storage: Deciding which traditional relational databases or NoSQL database would be favorable based on your particular use case.
Concurrency and Consistency Control in Distributed Systems
Concurrency and consistency control mechanisms ensure that multiple components can safely work together without data corruption or inconsistencies. Some common techniques include:
- Locks and Semaphores: Manage a common use of sources.
- Optimistic Concurrency Control: Provides competition such that the majority of actions will go uninterrupted; the blocking will only occur once conflicting transactions have been resolved.
- Versioning: Keeping the current modification of data is by recording versions.
- Conflict Resolution: Strategies of dissolving data dissonances in networked surroundings.
The scalability and performance optimization of the distributed system are crucially important in order to sustain the capacity of the system when the loads increase but also to make sure that acceptable response times can be provided. Techniques for Optimization include:
- Load Balancing: Balancing the workloads among hosts by assigning suitable amount of resources to each host to maximize the utilization of resources.
- Caching: The data storing, which will help retrieve frequently asked data, will lessen the need for repetitive data retrieval.
- Horizontal Scaling: It is provisioning of more nodes which will lead to desired capacity.
- Vertical Scaling: Nodes increasing the power of interaction within the network.
- Profiling and Monitoring: Finding the performance bottlenecks and areas of improvement in order to let the processes perform in the maximum efficacy.
Security Considerations for Distributed Systems
While data security is one of the biggest concerns in the distributed systems to prevent data theft, integrity of the communication is another crucial aspect of it. Key Security Practices include:
- Authentication and Authorization: To achieve this, one would have to make sure only the people with permission or the authorized elements are accessing the resources.
- Encryption: Applying encryption during the transmission of data such as TLS/SSL and continuing to encrypt data when at rest
- Firewalls and Network Security: Perimeter security through locking down the network boundaries and carrying out the access control.
- Intrusion Detection and Prevention: Monitoring in and addressing the threat position.
- Secure APIs: Security measure implementing that APIs use proper protection against common vulnerabilities (SQL injection, cross-site scripting) should be done.
Deployment and Operations in Distributed Systems
Such process in involves deploying and hosting of deployed systems in production environments for operational purpose. Best practices for deployement and operations include:
- Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Utilization of instruments like Terraform and Ansible for automated infrastructure deployment.
- Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD): Enhancing agility and making code quality a top priority.
- Monitoring and Logging: Monitoring the stability and usage of the system with respect to the ability to pinpoint problems and evaluate robustness.
- Auto-Scaling: In order to vary computational resources as needed.
- Disaster Recovery and Backup: And preserving your forests from unforeseen losses or recovering from disasters.
Similar Reads
Non-linear Components In electrical circuits, Non-linear Components are electronic devices that need an external power source to operate actively. Non-Linear Components are those that are changed with respect to the voltage and current. Elements that do not follow ohm's law are called Non-linear Components. Non-linear Co
11 min read
Spring Boot Tutorial Spring Boot is a Java framework that makes it easier to create and run Java applications. It simplifies the configuration and setup process, allowing developers to focus more on writing code for their applications. This Spring Boot Tutorial is a comprehensive guide that covers both basic and advance
10 min read
Class Diagram | Unified Modeling Language (UML) A UML class diagram is a visual tool that represents the structure of a system by showing its classes, attributes, methods, and the relationships between them. It helps everyone involved in a project—like developers and designers—understand how the system is organized and how its components interact
12 min read
Unified Modeling Language (UML) Diagrams Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a general-purpose modeling language. The main aim of UML is to define a standard way to visualize the way a system has been designed. It is quite similar to blueprints used in other fields of engineering. UML is not a programming language, it is rather a visual lan
14 min read
Steady State Response In this article, we are going to discuss the steady-state response. We will see what is steady state response in Time domain analysis. We will then discuss some of the standard test signals used in finding the response of a response. We also discuss the first-order response for different signals. We
9 min read
System Design Tutorial System Design is the process of designing the architecture, components, and interfaces for a system so that it meets the end-user requirements. This specifically designed System Design tutorial will help you to learn and master System Design concepts in the most efficient way from basics to advanced
4 min read
Backpropagation in Neural Network Back Propagation is also known as "Backward Propagation of Errors" is a method used to train neural network . Its goal is to reduce the difference between the model’s predicted output and the actual output by adjusting the weights and biases in the network.It works iteratively to adjust weights and
9 min read
Polymorphism in Java Polymorphism in Java is one of the core concepts in object-oriented programming (OOP) that allows objects to behave differently based on their specific class type. The word polymorphism means having many forms, and it comes from the Greek words poly (many) and morph (forms), this means one entity ca
7 min read
3-Phase Inverter An inverter is a fundamental electrical device designed primarily for the conversion of direct current into alternating current . This versatile device , also known as a variable frequency drive , plays a vital role in a wide range of applications , including variable frequency drives and high power
13 min read
What is Vacuum Circuit Breaker? A vacuum circuit breaker is a type of breaker that utilizes a vacuum as the medium to extinguish electrical arcs. Within this circuit breaker, there is a vacuum interrupter that houses the stationary and mobile contacts in a permanently sealed enclosure. When the contacts are separated in a high vac
13 min read