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Type o

f Talk: UTCS Colloquia

Speaker/Affiliation: Marcos K. Aguilera/Microso

ft Research

Talk Audience: UTCS Faculty, Graduate Students, Undergra

duate Students and Outside Interested Parties

Date/Time: Friday, Octo

ber 7, 2011, 1:00 p.m.

Location: ACES 2.402

Host: Michael Walfi

sh

Talk Title: Transactional Storage for Geo-Replicated Systems

Talk Abstract:
We describe the design and implementation of Walter, a

key-value store that supports transactions and replicates data across dista

nt sites. A key feature behind Walter is a new property called Parallel Sna

pshot Isolation (PSI). PSI allows Walter to replicate data asynchronously,
while providing strong guarantees within each site. PSI precludes write-wr

ite conflicts, so that developers need not worry about conflict-resolution
logic. To prevent write-write conflicts and implement PSI, Walter uses tw

o new and simple techniques: preferred sites and counting sets. We use Walt

er to build a social networking application and port a Twitter-like applica

tion.

Speaker Bio:
Marcos received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from

Cornell University in 2000. He then joined Compaq''s Systems Research Cente

r, which merged with HP Labs in 2002. He has been a researcher at MSR-SVC

since 2008.