Title :
Automatic service availability management in asynchronous distributed systems
Author :
Cristian, Flaviu ; Mishra, Shivakant
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Comput. Sci. & Eng., California Univ., San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
Abstract :
An availability management service is responsible for automatically ensuring that all critical services of a distributed system remain continuously available to users despite node removals and restarts caused by failures, maintenance and growth. We present an availability management service for an asynchronous distributed system characterized by unbounded communication delays and by the availability at all nodes of local, nonsynchronized timers that measure the passage of real time with some known accuracy. Examples of such systems are Unix, VMS, VM or MVS based distributed systems connected by local area networks such as Ethernet, token ring, FDDI, or channel-to-channel adapters. The presentation stresses the main ideas behind this new service, and outlines a simple design that depends upon the existence of asynchronous membership and atomic broadcast group communication services
Keywords :
distributed processing; fault tolerant computing; local area networks; operating systems (computers); reconfigurable architectures; Ethernet; FDDI; MVS; Unix; VM; VMS; asynchronous distributed systems; asynchronous membership; atomic broadcast group communication services; automatic service availability management; channel-to-channel adapters; local area networks; node removals; nonsynchronized timers; restarts; system failure; token ring; unbounded communication delays; Availability; Delay effects; Ethernet networks; FDDI; Local area networks; Real time systems; Stress; Token networks; Virtual manufacturing; Voice mail;
Conference_Titel :
Configurable Distributed Systems, 1994., Proceedings of 2nd International Workshop on
Conference_Location :
Pittsburgh, PA
Print_ISBN :
0-8186-5390-6
DOI :
10.1109/IWCDS.1994.289935
