1 / 40

Transactions in Distributed Systems

Transactions in Distributed Systems. Slower to access information from remote node. Partial crashes in the system. Problems with message transmissions. Access of local information is much faster. Total Crashes. Distributed vs. Local Systems. What is a transaction?.

whitley
Download Presentation

Transactions in Distributed Systems

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Transactions in Distributed Systems

  2. Slower to access information from remote node. Partial crashes in the system. Problems with message transmissions. Access of local information is much faster. Total Crashes. Distributed vs. Local Systems

  3. What is a transaction? • In databases, a transaction is “a collection of operations that represent a unit of consistency and recovery” • Overall view of a transaction: • Initialization. (Memory, resources etc.) • Reads and modifications to consistent resource objects. • Abort: Changes are undone and not saved and resources are released • Commit: Changes are saved and resources are released. Resources and information remain consistent.

  4. Distributed Transactions • Problem and solution ideas are very similar to the ones in transactions of database systems. • Solutions such as Concurrency, Atomicity and Recovery of transactions. • Additional problems in distributed transactions due to the reliance on network communication.

  5. Problems with Distributed Transactions • Concurrency control of transactions • Inconsistencies due to Failures • Recovery from System Crashes • Presented solutions: Argus, QuickSilver, RVM

  6. Concurrency Solution • Use of read and write locks to synchronize the access or modification of system resources. • A two-phase lock mechanism to allow full seriability.

  7. Inconsistent system states due to Failures • This is solved having atomicity of operations. • An operation can either commit or abort.

  8. Solution to Recovery • Save useful data of a transaction in stable storage. • Have a mechanism to bring back the whole system to a consistent state before continuing the transaction or abort the transaction.

  9. Committing a transaction • Have mechanism to ensure that all operations, remote or local, commit or abort at “near” the same time when transaction commits. • Making sure that after transaction commit the entire system remains consistent.

  10. Argus -Barbara Liskov et al. • A programming language and System for Distributed Programs • Intended for programs that keep online data for long periods of time • Guardians provide nice encapsulation of objects and resources. • Actions allow atomicity of processes

  11. Assumptions • Nodes can communicate only the exchange of messages. • It is impossible for a failed node to send messages. • Messages may be lost, delayed or out of order. • Corruption in messages are detectable.

  12. Guardians • Object that encapsulates resources in the system. • Resides in a single node and each node can have more than one guardian. • Resources are accessed through handlers(location independent). • Guardians can create other Guardians at the specified node. • Contains stable objects and volatile objects.

  13. Printer Guardian

  14. Atomic Actions (Actions) • Actions are total, either it commits or aborts(using atomic objects). • Actions can be nested(actions & subactions). • When action commits it propagates its locks and the object versions of the local guardian to the parent action. • The p-list (participating guardians of committed descendents) propagate to the parent.

  15. Actions are Serializable • Strict two-phase locking is used(locks are held until action commits or aborts). • Can prove that using a strict two-phase lock mechanism implies seriability of actions.

  16. Action Tree

  17. Concurrency Control Solution • Synchronization access to resources is done via locks. • Every operation is a read or a write. • Seriability, totality and synchronization of actions to shared objects.

  18. Locks in Nested Transactions - J. Eliot B. Moss • “An action can acquire a read lock iff all holders of write locks are ancestors” • “It can acquire a write lock iff all holders of read or write locks are ancestors”

  19. Inconsistencies • Inconsistencies are solved via the totality of actions. • An action can either commit or abort.

  20. Recovery from Crashes • Solved by the atomicity of actions and by using versions of the stable objects. • Versions are passed up the action tree when action commits.

  21. Two-Phase Commit Protocol (I) • Topaction guardian sends “prepare” messages to guardian participants in the transaction. • Participants receive message, records versions of the objects modified by the descendents and a “prepare” record is saved in stable storage. Read locks are released. • Participants replies with an “ok” message. • If some participant can’t save the necessary information it sends a “refuse” message. • If topaction receives any refused response or does not respond, it aborts the transaction and “abort” messages are sent.

  22. Two-Phase Commit Protocol (II) • If every participant replies “ok”, topaction guardian writes a committed record and sends “commit” messages to participants. • Participant writes a commit record, updates new versions of the objects, releases locks and sends a “done” message. • Topaction guardian saves a record after all participants have acknowledge. • 2Phase Commit Protocol makes sure that the transaction either commits or aborts.

  23. Data on Action Commits and Aborts

  24. Timing of Topactions

  25. QuickSilver -Schmuck & Wyllie • Operating system that supports atomicity, recoverability and concurrency of transactions. • Flexible Concurrency control policy, each node can have its own policy. • Transaction commit is done via one-phase or two-phase commit protocol depending on the node. • No nested transactions.

  26. Transaction Management • It is made up of three main pieces. • Transaction Manager. • Transactional IPC. • A log manager.

  27. Transaction Manager • Transaction Manager handles the coordination of a transaction, from start to finish. • TM starts a transaction when it receives an IPC request from a process. • TM assigns globally unique TID and registers it with the kernel.

  28. Transactional IPC • IPC are done on behalf of a transaction. • A participant of a transaction is either a process that created the transaction or a process that received a request with an TID. • Remote requests are handled by the local Communication Manager process (CM).

  29. Log Manager • Records appended at the end of a file. • Uses log to recover during the two-phase commit protocol. • LM may be used as checkpoints in long running computations.

  30. Concurrency • QuickSilver allows each node to have it’s own concurrency control policy. • DFS does not enforce full seriability(improves performance). • Write locks obtained only when directory is renamed, created or deleted. • Reads lock are not required when reading a directory. • Read locks on files are released when file is closed. • Write locks on files are released until transaction commits.

  31. Recovery • Recovery is handled by the QuickSilver distributed file system (DFS). • Guarantees changes are saved on commit and it undoes any changes on abort.

  32. Transaction Commit • TM collects information about all the participants from the kernel. • If CM is a participant, TM asks for list of machines who received a request. • TM requests all remote machines to recursively commit. • Any communication or machine failures detected by CM causes an abort in the transaction.

  33. Comparing AIX and QuickSilver

  34. Recoverable Virtual Memory Satyanarayanan et al. • Only addresses the problem of Recovery. • Stores Virtual memory in external data segments found in stable storage. • Portable with a library that is linked in with applications. • “Value simplicity over generality” by adopting a layered approach. • Provides independent control over atomicity and concurrency as well as other problems such as deadlocks and starvations.

  35. Layered Approach of RVM

  36. Segments and Regions • Applications map regions of segments into their virtual memory.

  37. Sequence of Operations • Select regions in virtual memory to be mapped. • Get a global transaction ID. • Successful commit saves segments in log.

  38. Crash Recovery • Recovery consists of reading the log from tail to head and then reconstructing the last committed changes. • Modifications are applied to the external data segment. • Log is emptied.

  39. Truncation • Reclaiming space in the log by applying changes to the external data segment. • Necessary because space is finite.

  40. In Summary • Argus provides a complete solution with atomicity, concurrency control and recovery. • However, it is too complex, slow and unoptimized. • QuickSilver shifts the problem of concurrency control to the individual nodes and performs as good as AIX. • RVM addresses only the problem of recovery in VM and introduces a “neat” layered structure to address the other problems.

More Related