FH2024 / R2019 / COMP / BE / SEM-8 / Distributed Computing / Practice Questions 2

Short Answer Questions

1. Enlist the desirable features of global scheduling algorithm.
2. State major activities involved in the process migration.
3. Explain the need to migrate code in distributed systems.
4. Enlist the issues in designing load sharing algorithms.
5. Discuss advantages of process migration.
6. Differentiate between load balancing and load sharing.
7. Consider following task assignment problem example with (a) intertask communication costs
and (b) execution costs of the tasks on the two nodes. (i) Create assignment graph. (ii)
Calculate serial assignment total cost.

8. Consider four processes operating on the same data item x. Process P1 first performs W(x)a to
x. Later (in absolute time), process P2 also performs a write operation, by setting the value of x
to b. However, both processes P3 and P4 first read value b, and later value a. In other words, the
write operation of process P2 appears to have taken place before that of P1· Identify consistency
maintained in the above scenario. Justify your answer.
9. Consider the write operations performed by a single process P at two different local copies of
the same data store. The process P performs a write operation on x at local copy L1. Later, P
performs another write operation on x, but this time at L2. The previous write operation at L1
has already been propagated to L2. Identify consistency maintained in the above scenario.
Justify your answer.
10. Explain how the Monotonic read consistency model is different from the Read your Write
consistency model.
11. Give desirable features of a good distributed file system.
Long Answer Questions
1. Explain client-centric consistency models with examples.
2. Explain data-centric consistency models with examples.
3. Explain checkpointing. Also explain independent and coordinated approaches in brief.
4. Explain the different types of file-sharing semantics.
5. Discuss and compare the client-initiated approach and the server-initiated approach of cache
validation schemes.
6. Write a short note on “Network File System (NFS).”