• In distributed systems, transparency refers to the ability to hide the underlying complexities of the system from the users and applications.
• Transparency ensures that the distributed system should be perceived as a single entity by the users or the application programmers rather than the collection of multiple, distributed components.
• The transparency list is a categorization of the different types of transparency that can be achieved in distributed systems.

 

Access Transparency: 

• Access Transparency refers to the ability of a distributed system to provide uniform access to resources, regardless of their location or representation.
• For example, accessing a remote file using NFS (Network File System) appears the same as accessing a local file.

 

Location Transparency: 

• Location Transparency refers to the ability of a distributed system to provide the illusion that resources are local, even though they may be physically distributed across multiple machines. 
• For example, a user accessing a file on a remote server should not have to be aware of the differences between accessing a local file and accessing a remote file.

 

Concurrency Transparency: 

• Concurrency Transparency refers to the ability of a distributed system to provide concurrent access to resources, without the user or application being aware of the concurrency.
• For example, multiple users accessing the same file simultaneously without encountering inconsistencies.

 

Parallelism Transparency: 

• Parallelism Transparency enables parallel activities to run without users knowing how, where, and when it is made possible by the systems.

 

Failure Transparency: 

• Failure Transparency refers to the ability of a distributed system to hide the effects of failures, such as hardware failures, network failures, or software crashes, from users and applications. 
• For example, if a server fails, users should not be aware of the failure and should be able to continue using the system.

 

Replication transparency: 

• Replication transparency refers to the ability of the system to hide the fact that multiple copies of a resource exist. 
• For example, a user accessing a file should not have to know whether they are accessing the original copy or a replicated copy.

 

Migration Transparency: 

• Migration Transparency refers to the ability of a distributed system to allow resources to be moved between different physical locations or machines without affecting the operations that use those resources. 
• For example, migrating a virtual machine between different physical servers without interrupting the service provided by that machine.

 

Performance Transparency: 

• Performance Transparency refers to the ability of a distributed system to hide the details of performance-related issues, such as network latency or server load, from users and applications. 
• For example, a user accessing a remote file may not be aware of the network latency that affects the performance of the operation.

 

Security Transparency: 

• Security Transparency refers to the ability of a distributed system to provide secure access to resources, without the user or application being aware of the security mechanisms in place. 
• For example, a user accessing a remote server using SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encryption.

 

Administration Transparency: 

• Administration Transparency refers to the ability of a distributed system to simplify the administrative tasks involved in managing the system. 
• For example, a system that automatically manages the allocation of resources based on demand and availability.