Parallel state transfer in object replication systems

Abstract

Replication systems require a state-transfer mechanism in order to recover crashed replicas and to integrate new ones into replication groups. This paper presents and evaluates efficient techniques for parallel state transfer in such systems. These techniques enable a faster integration of replicas and improve overall service availability. On the basis of previous work on distributed download in client-server and peer-to-peer systems, we obtain parallel state-transfer mechanisms for replicated objects. Our algorithms support static and dynamic distributed download of state without a priori knowledge about the state size. A non-blocking transfer minimises the time of service unavailability during state transfer. In addition, partial state capturing is presented as an additional technique that improves the parallel transfer of large states. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2007.