The anatomy study of efficient agreement in a cloud computing environment with fallible processes

Fault-tolerance is an important research topic in the study of distributed systems. To counter the influence of faulty components, it is essential to reach a common agreement in the presence of faults before performing certain tasks. However, the agreement problem is fundamental to fault-tolerant distributed systems. In previous studies, protocols dealing with the agreement problem have focused on a network topology with faulty hardware components. However, cloud computing, an Internet-based development in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet has become a significant issue. Therefore, previous protocols for the agreement problem with fallible hardware are not suitable for a cloud computing environment with fallible processes. To enhance fault tolerance, the agreement problem in a cloud computing environment with fallible processes is revisited in this study. The proposed protocol can solve the agreement problem with a minimal number of rounds of message exchange and tolerates a maximal number of faulty processes.