Error recovery in shared memory multiprocessors using privatecaches

The problem of recovering from processor transient faults in shared memory multiprocessor systems is examined. A user-transparent checkpointing and recovery scheme using private caches is presented. Processes can recover from errors due to faulty processors by restarting from the checkpointed computation state. Implementation techniques using checkpoint identifiers and recovery stacks are examined as a means of reducing performance degradation in processor utilization during normal execution. This cache-based checkpointing technique prevents rollback propagation, provides rapid recovery, and can be integrated into standard cache coherence protocols. An analytical model is used to estimate the relative performance of the scheme during normal execution. Extensions to take error latency into account are presented     

An uncoordinated asynchronous checkpointing model for hierarchical scientific workflows

Scientific workflow systems often operate in unreliable environments, and have accordingly incorporated different fault tolerance techniques. One of them is the checkpointing technique combined with its corresponding rollback recovery process. Different checkpointing schemes have been developed and at various levels: task- (or activity-) level and workflow-level. At workflow-level, the usually adopted approach is to establish a checkpointing frequency in the system which determines the moment at which a global workflow checkpoint – a snapshot of the whole workflow enactment state at normal execution (without failures) – has to be accomplished. We describe an alternative workflow-level checkpointing scheme and its corresponding rollback recovery process for hierarchical scientific workflows in which every workflow node in the hierarchy accomplishes its own local checkpoint autonomously and in an uncoordinated way after its enactment. In contrast to other proposals, we utilise the Reference net formalism for expressing the scheme. Reference nets are a particular type of Petri nets which can more effectively provide the abstractions to support and to express hierarchical workflows and their dynamic adaptability.     

Processor- and memory-based checkpoint and rollback recovery

Several hardware-based techniques that support checkpoint and rollback recovery are presented. The focus is on hardware schemes for uniprocessors, shared-memory multiprocessors, and distributed virtual-memory systems. A taxonomy for processor and memory techniques based on the memory hierarchy is presented. This provides a basis for understanding subtle differences among the various schemes. Processor-based schemes that handle transient faults by using processor-based transparent rollback techniques and memory-based schemes that roll back data instead of instructions and can be integrated with the processor techniques or can be exploited by higher levels of software are discussed     

基于虚拟文件操作的文件检查点设置

实现分布/并行系统容错的基础是单进程检查点设置和卷回恢复技术,而对活动文件信息进行保存和恢复则是这种技术的重要方面.提出一种虚拟文件操作策略,实现了对用户文件的检查点设置,有效地解决了发生故障时用户文件内容与进程全局状态的不一致的问题.该方法通过文件块式管理、检查点分布操作等技术,使得在空间开销、正常运行时间、恢复时间等性能指标上优于其他方法,并且具有对用户透明、可最大限度地保留已完成工作的特点.     

一种降低并行程序检查点开销的方法

检查点设置和卷回恢复是提高系统可靠性和实现容错计算的有效途径，其性能通常用开销率来评价，而检查点开销是影响开销率的主要因素。针对目前并行程序运行时存在较多通信阻塞时间的现状，该文在写时复制检查点缓存的基础上提出了一种进一步降低检查点开销的方法。通过控制状态保存线程的调度和选择合适的状态保存粒度，该方法能很好地利用通信阻塞时间隐藏状态保存线程运行时带来的开销，从而能进一步降低开销率。     

超步透导的回卷恢复

工作站机群系统已成为分布式并行处理发展的主流方向之一 .随着机群系统应用领域的逐渐拓展和规模的不断扩大 ,人们对其可靠性的要求日益提高 .设计高可靠的群机系统 ,需要着重研究其系统容错技术 .本文叙述了并行异构环境回卷恢复和检查点派生 .实现透明的可移植容错和负载均衡能力 .避免调整检查点就可以构成全局一致性状态 .不仅使 BSP应用程序自治容错能力 ,而且能够在机群 (Clusters)间迁移 ,保持系统负载均衡 .重点介绍检查点设置、检查点派生、卷回、进程迁移技术     

A quasi-synchronous checkpointing algorithm that prevents contention for stable storage

Checkpointing and rollback recovery are established techniques for handling failures in distributed systems. Under synchronous checkpointing, each process involved in the distributed computation takes checkpoint almost simultaneously. This causes contention for network stable storage and hence degrades performance as processes may have to wait for long time for the checkpointing operation to complete. In this paper, we propose a staggered quasi-synchronous checkpointing algorithm which reduces contention for network stable storage without any synchronization overhead.     

A fully informed model-based checkpointing protocol for preventing useless checkpoints

Checkpointing and rollback recovery are widely used techniques for handling failures in distributed systems. When processes involved in a distributed computation are allowed to take checkpoints independently without any coordination with each other, some or all of the checkpoints taken may not be part of any consistent global checkpoint, and hence, are useless for recovery. Communication-induced checkpointing algorithms allow processes to take checkpoints independently and also ensure that each checkpoint taken is part of a consistent global checkpoint by forcing processes to take some additional checkpoints. It is well known that it is impossible to design an optimal communication-induced checkpointing algorithm (i.e. a checkpointing algorithm that takes minimum number of forced checkpoints). So, researchers have designed communication-induced checkpointing algorithms that reduce forced checkpoints using different heuristics. In this paper, we present a communication-induced checkpointing algorithm which takes less number of forced checkpoints when compared to some of the existing checkpointing algorithms in its class.     

Reliable user‐level rollback recovery implementation for multithreaded processes on windows

The existing user‐level checkpointing schemes support only a limited portion of multithreaded programs because they are derived from the schemes for single‐threaded applications. This paper addresses the impact of thread suspension point on rollback recovery, and presents a checkpointing scheme for multithreaded processes. Unlike the existing schemes in which the checkpointer suspends every working thread, our scheme employs a distinctive strategy that every working thread suspends itself. This technique manages to avoid the suspension point in the API code or kernel code, ensuring correct rollback recovery. Our scheme supports inter‐thread synchronization and thread lifetime. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A multi-cycle checkpointing protocol that ensures strict 1-rollback

In this paper, a checkpointing protocol based on loose synchronization is proposed. The protocol enables processes to take checkpoints at different frequencies so that each process can control its rollback distance. In traditional asynchronous and quasi-synchronous checkpointing protocols, the checkpoints that are not up-to-date may be used for recovery. As a result, the rollback distance is often difficult to control. In the proposed protocol, the checkpoint cycle of each process is dynamically adjusted using a pessimistic scheme so that strict 1-rollback is achieved; namely, one of the last two checkpoints of each process can be utilized for recovery.     

A New Approach for High Performance Computing Systems with Various Checkpointing Schemes

Roll-forward recovery schemes were proposed to enhance the performance of fault tolerant systems employing checkpointing approach. In the roll-forward schemes, multiple processors are used for simultaneous roll-forward and validation processing. This paper proposes the sample comparison approach along with the checkpointing, which further improves the performance by reducing the overhead imposed by the checkpointing. We also develop general analytical models for estimating the availability, which are applicable for any checkpointing scheme. Performance comparisons reveal that the availabilities of the checkpointing schemes with sample comparison are higher than those of the schemes without it, while the required checkpoint interval is larger.     

SWICH: A Prototype for Efficient Cache-Level Checkpointing and Rollback

Existing cache-level checkpointing schemes do not continuously support a large rollback window. Immediately after a checkpoint, the number of instructions that the processor can undo falls to zero. To address this problem, we introduce Swich, an FPGA-based prototype of a new cache-level scheme that keeps two live checkpoints at all times, forming a sliding rollback window that maintains a large minimum and average length     

An optimistic checkpointing and message logging approach for consistent global checkpoint collection in distributed systems

Checkpointing and rollback recovery are widely used techniques for achieving fault-tolerance in distributed systems. In this paper, we present a novel checkpointing algorithm which has the following desirable features: A process can independently initiate consistent global checkpointing by saving its current state, called a tentative checkpoint. Other processes come to know about a consistent global checkpoint initiation through information piggy-backed with the application messages or limited control messages if necessary. When a process comes to know about a new consistent global checkpoint initiation, it takes a tentative checkpoint after processing the message (not before processing the message as in existing communication-induced checkpointing algorithms). After a process takes a tentative checkpoint, it starts logging the messages sent and received in memory. When a process comes to know that every other process has taken a tentative checkpoint corresponding to current consistent global checkpoint initiation, it flushes the tentative checkpoint and the message log to the stable storage. The tentative checkpoints together with the message logs stored in the stable storage form a consistent global checkpoint. Two or more processes can concurrently initiate consistent global checkpointing by taking a new tentative checkpoint; in that case, the tentative checkpoints taken by all these processes will be part of the same consistent global checkpoint. The sequence numbers assigned to checkpoints by a process increase monotonically. Checkpoints with the same sequence number form a consistent global checkpoint. We also present the performance evaluation of our algorithm.     

共享存储多处理机系统中的多级高速缓存

共享存储多处理机系统中，存储子系统的性能是影响整个系统性能的关键之－。我们通过基于访存地址流的模拟，从缺失率，平均访存时间和总线占用三方面，对共享存储多处理机系统中的两种两组缓存方案做了性能比较，并将它们同没有第二级缓存的情形做了性能比较。     

Necessary and sufficient conditions for transaction-consistent global checkpoints in a distributed database system

Checkpointing and rollback recovery are well-known techniques for handling failures in distributed systems. The issues related to the design and implementation of efficient checkpointing and recovery techniques for distributed systems have been thoroughly understood. For example, the necessary and sufficient conditions for a set of checkpoints to be part of a consistent global checkpoint has been established for distributed computations. In this paper, we address the analogous question for distributed database systems. In distributed database systems, transaction-consistent global checkpoints are useful not only for recovery from failure but also for audit purposes. If each data item of a distributed database is checkpointed independently by a separate transaction, none of the checkpoints taken may be part of any transaction-consistent global checkpoint. However, allowing individual data items to be checkpointed independently results in non-intrusive checkpointing. In this paper, we establish the necessary and sufficient conditions for the checkpoints of a set of data items to be part of a transaction-consistent global checkpoint of the distributed database. Such conditions can also help in the design and implementation of non-intrusive checkpointing algorithms for distributed database systems.     

Asynchronous recovery without using vector timestamps

A checkpoint of a process involved in a distributed computation is said to be useful if it is part of a consistent global checkpoint. In this paper, we present a quasi-synchronous checkpointing algorithm that makes every checkpoint useful. We also present an efficient asynchronous recovery algorithm based on the checkpointing algorithm. The checkpointing algorithm allows the processes to take checkpoints asynchronously and also forces the processes to take additional checkpoints in order to make every checkpoint useful. The recovery algorithm can handle concurrent failure of multiple processes. The recovery algorithm has no domino effect and a failed process needs only to roll back to its latest checkpoint and request the other processes to roll back to a consistent checkpoint. Messages are only selectively logged to cope with various types of message abnormalities that arise due to rollback and hence results in low message logging overhead. Unlike some existing algorithms, our algorithm does not use vector timestamps for tracking dependency between checkpoints and hence results in low message overhead during failure-free operation. Moreover, a process can asynchronously decide garbage checkpoints and delete them from the stable storage—garbage checkpoints are the checkpoints that are no longer required for the purpose of recovery.     

A new approach for high performance computing systems with various checkpointing schemes

Roll-forward recovery schemes were proposed to enhance the performance of fault tolerant systems employing checkpointing approach. In the roll-forward schemes, multiple processors are used for simultaneous roll-forward and validation processing. This paper proposes thesample comparison approach along with the checkpointing, which further improves the performance by reducing the overhead imposed by the checkpointing. We also develop general analytical models for estimating the availability, which are applicable for any checkpointing scheme. Performance comparisons reveal that the availabilities of the checkpointing schemes with sample comparison are higher than those of the schemes without it, while the required checkpoint interval is larger. This research was supported in part by the MIC (Ministry of Information and Communication), Korea, under the ITRC support program supervised by the UTA and CUCN 21st Century Frontier R&D Program.     

Concurrent checkpoint initiation and recovery algorithms on asynchronous ring networks

Checkpointing with rollback recovery is a well-known method for achieving fault-tolerance in distributed systems. In this work, we introduce algorithms for checkpointing and rollback recovery on asynchronous unidirectional and bi-directional ring networks. The proposed checkpointing algorithms can handle multiple concurrent initiations by different processes. While taking checkpoints, processes do not have to take into consideration any application message dependency. The synchronization is achieved by passing control messages among the processes. Application messages are acknowledged. Each process maintains a list of unacknowledged messages. Here we use a logical checkpoint, which is a standard checkpoint (i.e., snapshot of the process) plus a list of messages that have been sent by this process but are unacknowledged at the time of taking the checkpoint. The worst case message complexity of the proposed checkpointing algorithm is O(kn) when k initiators initiate concurrently. The time complexity is O(n). For the recovery algorithm, time and message complexities are both O(n).     

基于检测点设置依赖图和属性表的卷回恢复算法

为了解决检测点设置过程中的Domino效应问题及卷回恢复过程中的活锁问题,并最大限度地减小时间开销,提出了基于检测点设置依赖图和属性表的卷回恢复算法。同以前的算法相比较,该算法一方面节省了用于进程之间同步的时间开销,另一方面检测点设置及卷回过程中涉及少量的相关进程。对该算法的正确性进行了证明。     

WindowsNT环境下的进程检查点设置与回卷恢复

阐述了WindowsNT环境下应用程序的检查点设置与回卷恢复机制,并介绍了设计和实现的检查点设置与恢复工具WinNTCkp.WinNTCkpt采用标准WindowsAPI函数,通过代码动态注入和对系统调用进行包裹的方法进行检查点设置与回卷恢复。与同类工具相比,WinNTCkpt具有不需修改应用程序源代码,不需对应用程序进行重新编译或连接,支持对用户文件内容的检查设置与回卷恢复的特点。WinNTCkpt是正在研制开发的高可用性机群计算环境的核心,也是在机群环境下实现进程迁移和负载平衡的技术基础。