Abstract

Checkpointing and logging are widely used techniques to provide fault-tolerance for the distributed systems. However, logging imposes too much overhead on the processing to be a practical solution. In this paper, we propose a low-overhead logging scheme for the distributed shared memory system based on the lazy release consistency memory model. Unlike the previous schemes in which the logging is performed when a new data item is accessed by a process, the stable logging in the proposed scheme is performed only when a lock grant causes an actual dependency relation between the processes, which significantly reduces the logging frequency. Also, instead of making a stable log of the accessed data items, a process logs stably only some access information, and the accessed data items are saved in the volatile log. For the recovery from a failure, the correct version of the accessed data items can be effectively traced by using the logged access information. As a result, the amount of logged information can also be reduced.

Author Keywords: Distributed shared memory system; Fault-tolerance; Message logging; Lazy release consistency; Rollback-recovery

Article Outline

1. Introduction

2. Background

2.1. System model

2.2. Consistent recovery line

3. Protocol description

3.1. Logging protocol

3.2. Checkpointing

3.3. Rollback-recovery

3.4. Correctness

4. Performance study

4.1. Simulation environments

4.2. Simulation using synthetic traces

4.3. Simulation using parallel program traces

4.4. Experimental results from implementation

5. Conclusions

Acknowledgements

References

Vitae