Tolerating byzantine faults in transaction processing systems using commit barrier scheduling

This paper describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of a replication scheme to handle Byzantine faults in transaction processing database systems. The scheme compares answers from queries and updates on multiple replicas which are unmodified, off-the-shelf systems, to provide a single database that is Byzantine fault tolerant. The scheme works when the replicas are homogeneous, but it also allows heterogeneous replication in which replicas come from different vendors. Heterogeneous replicas reduce the impact of bugs and security compromises because they are implemented independently and are thus less likely to suffer correlated failures. The main challenge in designing a replication scheme for transaction processing systems is ensuring that the different replicas execute transactions in equivalent serial orders while allowing a high degree of concurrency. Our scheme meets this goal using a novel concurrency control protocol, commit barrier scheduling (CBS). We have imp...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: SOSP
• Authors: Ben Vandiver, Hari Balakrishnan, Barbara Liskov, Samuel Madden
• Keywords: Heterogeneous Replicas, Operating System, Replicas Execute Transactions, Replication Scheme, SOSP 2007