Performance comparisons of index‐based communication‐induced checkpointing protocols

Abstract

Communication‐induced checkpointing (CIC) protocols can be used to prevent the domino effect. Such protocols that belong to the index‐based category have been shown to perform more efficiently. In this paper, some results of comparing index‐based CIC protocols are proposed. First, we prove that comparing several protocols based on the lazy indexing strategy can be simply based on their checkpoint‐inducing conditions. Next, we show that improved indexing strategies may not always yield a better performance than the classical strategy. Finally, we present a simulation study to verify our foregoing theoretical results. The simulation is conducted in the typical point‐to‐point computational environment. Influences of enhancements on indexing strategies and checkpoint‐inducing conditions for index‐based CIC protocols are discussed.     

Adaptive Remus: adaptive checkpointing for Xen-based virtual machine replication

With the ever increasing dependence on computers and networks, many systems are required to be continuously available in order to fulfil their mission. Virtualization technology enables high availability to be offered in a convenient, cost-effective manner: with the encapsulation provided by virtual machines (VMs), entire systems can be replicated transparently in software, obviating the need for expensive fault-tolerant hardware. Remus is a VM replication mechanism for the Xen hypervisor that provides high availability despite crash failures. Replication is performed by checkpointing the VM at fixed intervals. However, there is an antagonism between processing and communication regarding the optimal checkpoint interval: while longer intervals benefit processor-intensive applications, shorter intervals favour network-intensive applications. Thus, any chosen interval may not always be suitable for the hosted applications, limiting Remus usage in many scenarios. This work introduces Adaptive Remus, a proposal for adaptive checkpointing in Remus that dynamically adjusts the replication frequency according to the characteristics of running applications. Experimental results indicate that our proposal improves performance for applications that require both processing and communication, without harming applications that use only one type of resource.     

Accelerating incremental checkpointing for extreme-scale computing

Concern is beginning to grow in the high-performance computing (HPC) community regarding the reliability of future large-scale systems. Disk-based coordinated checkpoint/restart has been the dominant fault tolerance mechanism in HPC systems for the past 30 years. Checkpoint performance is so fundamental to scalability that nearly all capability applications have custom checkpoint strategies to minimize state and reduce checkpoint time. One well-known optimization to traditional checkpoint/restart is incremental checkpointing, which has a number of known limitations. To address these limitations, we describe libhashckpt, a hybrid incremental checkpointing solution that uses both page protection and hashing on GPUs to determine changes in application data with very low overhead. Using real capability workloads and a model outlining the viability and application efficiency increase of this technique, we show that hash-based incremental checkpointing can have significantly lower overheads and increased efficiency than traditional coordinated checkpointing approaches at the scales expected for future extreme-class systems.     

Unified model for assessing checkpointing protocols at extreme‐scale

In this paper, we present a unified model for several well‐known checkpoint/restart protocols. The proposed model is generic enough to encompass both extremes of the checkpoint/restart space, from coordinated approaches to a variety of uncoordinated checkpoint strategies (with message logging). We identify a set of crucial parameters, instantiate them, and compare the expected efficiency of the fault tolerant protocols, for a given application/platform pair. We then propose a detailed analysis of several scenarios, including some of the most powerful currently available high performance computing platforms, as well as anticipated Exascale designs. The results of this analytical comparison are corroborated by a comprehensive set of simulations. Altogether, they outline comparative behaviors of checkpoint strategies at very large scale, thereby providing insight that is hardly accessible to direct experimentation. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An Efficient Time-Based Checkpointing Protocol for Mobile Computing Systems over Mobile IP

Time-based coordinated checkpointing protocols are well suited for mobile computing systems because no explicit coordination message is needed while the advantages of coordinated checkpointing are kept. However, without coordination, every process has to take a checkpoint during a checkpointing process. In this paper, an efficient time-based coordinated checkpointing protocol for mobile computing systems over Mobile IP is proposed. The protocol reduces the number of checkpoints per checkpointing process to nearly minimum, so that fewer checkpoints need to be transmitted through the costly wireless link. Our protocol also performs very well in the aspects of minimizing the number and size of messages transmitted in the wireless network. In addition, the protocol is nonblocking because inconsistencies can be avoided by the piggybacked information in every message. Therefore, the protocol brings very little overhead to a mobile host with limited resource. Additionally, by taking advantage of reliable timers in mobile support stations, the time-based checkpointing protocol can adapt to wide area networks.     

Modified distributed snapshots algorithm for protocol stabilization

This paper assesses the use of Chandy and Lamport's distributed snapshots algorithm (DSA) for stabilizing a communication protocol, a special type of distributed system. We show that when a loss of coordination occurs during the distributed execution of the protocol, DSA is not guaranteed to terminate, and therefore it sometimes fails to obtain a global state or snapshot. We propose some modifications to DSA to solve this problem. Finally, we discuss how, in the case of a loss of coordination, the modified algorithm can be used to stabilize a communication protocol, and we assess the suitability of the global state obtained by DSA as a recovery point to be used later in a backward recovery procedure.     

实时内存数据库分区模糊检验点策略

检验点技术是实时内存数据库恢复的关键技术之一．在分析实时内存数据库数据特征基础上，给出了综合考虑数据和事务定时约束的数据检验点优先级计算方法．然后，结合内存数据库段式存储结构，讨论了一种基于数据段检验点优先级的分区模糊检验点策略PFCS—SCP．通过性能测试，表明所提出的检验点策略能减低超截止期事务比率．     

一个基于通信系统支持的并行检查点系统

在大规模机群环境下，检查点和恢复机制是一种必不可少的容错技术。该文提出一种基于机群通信系统的可靠性机制，在不作全局同步的情况下获取通信系统全局状态的方法，并利用该方法实现了一个对应用程序透明的并行检查点系统。该系统通过底层通信系统的支持降低了并行检查点的实现复杂度和执行开销，适用于大规模机群应用。     

支持分布式合作实时事务处理的协同检验点方法

在实时事务执行时，事务故障或数据竞争会导致事务重启，为减少事务重启损失的工作量，可以采用检验点技术保证事务的时间正确性．在一类分布式实时数据库应用中，不同结点的事务通过消息交换形成合作关系，为保证合作事务间的全局一致性，当某一事务记检验点时，相关事务也要记检验点．传统协同检验点方法没有考虑应用的定时约束，不能很好地支持分布式合作实时事务处理．该文提出了一种基于图论的协同检验点方法，利用在每个计算结点上为每个合作事务集维护的局部有向图，使用一个基于图论的计算过程标识出应记检验点的事务，该方法既具有最小协同检验点特性，又使全局检验点的时延最小．实验表明该算法减少了全局检验点时延，有利于实时事务截止期的满足．     

SFT: A consistent checkpointing algorithm with short freezing time

A consistent checkpointing algorithm with short freezing time(SFT) is presented in this paper.It supports fault-tolerance in distributed systems,The algorithm has shorter freezing time,lower overhead,and simplicity of recovery.To make checkpoint time shorter,a special control message(Munblock)is used to ensure that a process can respond the checkpoint event quickly at any given time.Moreover,main memory algorithm is used to improve the concurrency of checkpointing.By using SFT,the freezing time resulted by checkpointing is less than 0.03s.Furthermore,the control message number of SFT is only O(n).