The Inherent Difficulty of Timely Primary-Backup Replication

Authors:
Pramod Koppol;Kedar S. Namjoshi;Thanos Stathopoulos;Gordon T. Wilfong
Affiliations:
Alcatel-Lucent's Software, Services & Solutions group, Holmdel, New Jersey;Enabling Computing Technologies research domain, Bell Labs, Murray Hill, New Jersey;Enabling Computing Technologies research domain, Bell Labs, Murray Hill, New Jersey;Enabling Computing Technologies research domain, Bell Labs, Murray Hill, New Jersey
Venue:
Bell Labs Technical Journal
Year:
2012

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Abstract

We show that existing methods for primary-backup replication may disrupt the timing behavior of an underlying service to the extent of making it unusable. Furthermore, we prove that this problem is inherent to the standard primary-backup model. The formal proof is based on an analysis of the “local knowledge” available to each party in a correct primary-backup protocol. This negative result implies that entirely new approaches are needed to resolve the problem; on the positive side, the proof offers some hints for designing a solution. © 2012 Alcatel-Lucent. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.