An algorithm for non-interfering checkpoints and its practicality in distributed database systems

Abstract

The goal of checkpointing in database management systems is to save database states on a separate secure device so that the database can be recovered when errors and failures occur. Recent study shows the possibility of a checkpointing mechanism that does not interfere with the transaction processing, and yet achieves the global consistency of the checkpoints. The motivation of non-interfering checkpointing is to improve the system availability. Although the property of non-interference is highly desirable in many applications of distributed database systems, where restricting transaction activity during the checkpointing operation is not feasible, it makes checkpointing complicated and increases the workload of the system. In this paper, we study the practicality of a non-interfering checkpointing algorithm by analyzing the extra workload of the system