stdchk: A Checkpoint Storage System for Desktop Grid Computing

— Checkpointing is an indispensable technique to provide fault tolerance for long-running high-throughput applications like those running on desktop grids. This paper argues that a dedicated checkpoint storage system, optimized to operate in these environments, can offer multiple benefits: reduce the load on a traditional file system, offer high-performance through specialization, and, finally, optimize data management by taking into account checkpoint application semantics. Such a storage an present a unifying abstraction to checkpoint operations, while hiding the fact that there are no dedicated resources to store the checkpoint data. We prototype stdchk, a checkpoint storage system that uses scavenged disk space from participating desktops to build a low-cost storage system, offering a traditional file system interface for easy integration with applications. This paper presents the stdchk architecture, key performance optimizations, support for incremental checkpointing, and incre...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: ICDCS
• Authors: Samer Al-Kiswany, Matei Ripeanu, Sudharshan S. Vazhkudai, Abdullah Gharaibeh
• Keywords: Checkpoint Storage, Checkpoint Storage System, Distributed And Parallel Computing, ICDCS 2008, Low-cost Storage