A Performance Evaluation of a Quorum-Based State-Machine Replication Algorithm for Computing Grids

Quorum systems are well-known tools that improve the performance and the availability of distributed systems. In this report we explore their use as a means to achieve low response time for network services that are replicated and accessed over computing grids. To that end, we propose both a quorum construction and a quorum-based state-machine replication algorithm that tolerates crash failures in a partially synchronous model. We show through the evaluation of a real implementation that although simple, this quorum construction and replication algorithm exhibit a response time 20% lower than that of a regular active replication algorithm in appropriate conditions

Novelty circular neighboring technique using reactive fault tolerance method

The availability of the data in a distributed system can be increase by implementing fault tolerance mechanism in the system. Reactive method in fault tolerance mechanism deals with restarting the failed services, placing redundant copies of data in multiple nodes across network, in other words data replication and migrating the data for recovery. Even if the idea of data replication is solid, the challenge is to choose the right replication technique that able to provide better data availability as well as consistency that involves read and write operations on the redundant copies. Circular Neighboring Replication (CNR) technique exploits neighboring policy in replicating the data items in the system performs well with regards to lower copies needed to maintain the system availability at the highest. In a performance analysis with existing techniques, results show that CNR improves system availability by average 37% by offering only two replicas needed to maintain data availability and consistency. The study demonstrates the possibility of the proposed technique and the potential of deploying in larger and complex environment

Self-management for large-scale distributed systems

Autonomic computing aims at making computing systems self-managing by using autonomic managers in order to reduce obstacles caused by management complexity. This thesis presents results of research on self-management for large-scale distributed systems. This research was motivated by the increasing complexity of computing systems and their management. In the first part, we present our platform, called Niche, for programming self-managing component-based distributed applications. In our work on Niche, we have faced and addressed the following four challenges in achieving self-management in a dynamic environment characterized by volatile resources and high churn: resource discovery, robust and efficient sensing and actuation, management bottleneck, and scale. We present results of our research on addressing the above challenges. Niche implements the autonomic computing architecture, proposed by IBM, in a fully decentralized way. Niche supports a network-transparent view of the system architecture simplifying the design of distributed self-management. Niche provides a concise and expressive API for self-management. The implementation of the platform relies on the scalability and robustness of structured overlay networks. We proceed by presenting a methodology for designing the management part of a distributed self-managing application. We define design steps that include partitioning of management functions and orchestration of multiple autonomic managers. In the second part, we discuss robustness of management and data consistency, which are necessary in a distributed system. Dealing with the effect of churn on management increases the complexity of the management logic and thus makes its development time consuming and error prone. We propose the abstraction of Robust Management Elements, which are able to heal themselves under continuous churn. Our approach is based on replicating a management element using finite state machine replication with a reconfigurable replica set. Our algorithm automates the reconfiguration (migration) of the replica set in order to tolerate continuous churn. For data consistency, we propose a majority-based distributed key-value store supporting multiple consistency levels that is based on a peer-to-peer network. The store enables the tradeoff between high availability and data consistency. Using majority allows avoiding potential drawbacks of a master-based consistency control, namely, a single-point of failure and a potential performance bottleneck. In the third part, we investigate self-management for Cloud-based storage systems with the focus on elasticity control using elements of control theory and machine learning. We have conducted research on a number of different designs of an elasticity controller, including a State-Space feedback controller and a controller that combines feedback and feedforward control. We describe our experience in designing an elasticity controller for a Cloud-based key-value store using state-space model that enables to trade-off performance for cost. We describe the steps in designing an elasticity controller. We continue by presenting the design and evaluation of ElastMan, an elasticity controller for Cloud-based elastic key-value stores that combines feedforward and feedback control

Binary vote assignment on grid quorum replication technique with association rule

One of the biggest challenges that data grids users have to face today relates to the improvement of the data management. Organizations need to provide current data to users who may be geographically remote and to handle a volume of requests of data distributed around multiple sites in distributed environment. Therefore, the storage, availability, and consistency are important issues to be addressed to allow efficient and safe data access from many different sites. One way to effectively cope with these challenges is to rely on the replication technique. Replication is a useful technique for distributed database systems. Through this technique, a data can be accessed from multiple locations. Thus, replication increases data availability and accessibility to users. When one site fails, user still can access the same data at another site. Techniques such as Read-One-Write-All (ROWA), Hierarchical Replication Scheme (HRS) and Branch Replication Scheme (BRS) are the popular techniques being used for replication and data management. However, these techniques have its weaknesses in terms of communication costs that is the total replication servers needed to replicate the data. Furthermore, these techniques also do not consider the correlation between data during the fragmentation process. The knowledge about data correlation can be extracted from historical data using techniques of the data mining field. Without proper strategies, replication increases job execution time. In this research, the some-data-to-some-sites scheme called Binary Vote Assignment on Grid Quorum with Association (BV AGQAR) is proposed to manage replication for meaningful fragmented data in distributed database environment with low communication cost and processing time for a transaction. The main feature of BV AGQ-AR is that the technique integrates replication and data mining technique allowing meaningful extraction of knowledge from large data sets. Performance of the BVAGQ-AR technique comprised the following steps. First step is mining the data by using Apriori algorithm from Association Rules. It is used to discover the correlation between data. For the second step, the database is fragmented based on the data mining analysis results. This technique is executed to make sure data replication can be effectively done while saving cost. Then, the databases that are resulted after the fragmentation process are allocated at their assigned sites. Finally, after allocation process, each site has a database file and ready for any transaction and replication process. Finally, the result of the experiments shows that BV AGQ-AR can preserve the data consistency with the lowest communication cost and processing time for a transaction as compared to BCSA, PRA, ROW A, HRS and BRS

A Scheduling Algorithm for Defeating Collusion

By exploiting idle time on volunteer machines, desktop grids provide a way to execute large sets of tasks with negligible maintenance and low cost. Although desktop grids are attractive for cost-conscious projects, relying on external resources may compromise the correctness of application execution due to the well-known unreliability of nodes. In this paper, we consider the most challenging threat model: organized groups of cheaters that may collude to produce incorrect results. By using a previously described on-line algorithm for detecting collusion and characterizing the participant behaviors, we propose a scheduling algorithm that tackles collusion. Using several real-life traces, we show that our approach min- imizes redundancy while maximizing the number of correctly certified results