Conventional message-logging protocols log message data for availability. A design choice is where should the message data be logged: in volatile memory of the sender (sender-based) or on stable storage at the receiver (receiver-based). Whereas sender-based protocols are known to impose lower overhead during failure-free runs of applications, we have shown that the receiver-based protocols support faster recovery. Hence, conventional message-logging protocols present a tradeoff between performance during failure-free executions and recovery. We have eliminated this tradeoff by developing a new class of hybrid protocols that log messages both at the sender and the receiver; the logging at the receiver is performed asynchronously to minimize the overhead during failure-free execution. These protocols incur marginally higher (<1%) overhead as compared to the sender-based protocols, and yet in the common case achieve nearly the same recovery performance (within 3%) as the receiver-based protocols.

Representative Publications:

1. S. Rao, L. Alvisi, and H.M. Vin, The Cost of Recovery in Message Logging Protocols IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, Vol. 12, No. 2, March/April 2000, pp. 160-173. [ Paper ]
   
   
2. S. Rao, L. Alvisi, and H.M. Vin, Cost of Recovery in Message Logging Protocols, In Proceedings of the 17th IEEE Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems (SRDS'98), West Lafayette, IN, pages 10-18, November 1998 [ Abstract | Paper ]

3. S. Rao, L. Alvisi, and H.M. Vin, Hybrid Message Logging Protocols for Fast Recovery, (Fast Abstract) In Digest of FastAbstracts of the 28th Annual International Symposium on Fault Tolerant Computing (FTCS-28), Munich, Germany, pages 41--42, June 1998 [ Abstract | Paper ]