|
OSDI 2000 Abstract
Design and Evaluation of a Continuous Consistency Model
for Replicated Services
Haifeng Yu, and Amin Vahdat, Duke University
Abstract
The tradeoffs between consistency, performance, and
availability are well understood. Traditionally, however,
designers of replicated systems have been forced
to choose from either strong consistency guarantees or
none at all. This paper explores the semantic space between
traditional strong and optimistic consistency models
for replicated services. We argue that an important
class of applications can tolerate relaxed consistency, but
benefit from bounding the maximum rate of inconsistent
access in an application-specific manner. Thus, we develop
a set of metrics, Numerical Error, Order Error,
and Staleness, to capture the consistency spectrum. We
then present the design and implementation of TACT,
a middleware layer that enforces arbitrary consistency
bounds among replicas using these metrics. Finally, we
show that three replicated applications demonstrate significant
semantic and performance benefits from using
our framework.
- View the full text of this paper in
PDF form.
- If you need the latest Adobe Acrobat Reader, you can download it from Adobe's site.
- To become a USENIX Member, please see our Membership Information.
|
Need help? Use our Contacts page.
