REMEM: REmote MEMory as Checkpointing Storage

Check pointing is a widely used mechanism for supporting fault tolerance, but notorious in its high-cost disk access. The idea of memory-based check pointing has been extensively studied in research but made little success in practice due to its complexity and potential reliability concerns. In this study we present the design and implementation of REMEM, a Remote Memory check pointing system to extend the check pointing storage from disk to remote memory. A unique feature of REMEM is that it can be integrated into existing disk-based check pointing systems seamlessly. A user can flexibly switch between REMEM and disk as check pointing storage to balance the efficiency and reliability. The implementation of REMEM on Open MPI is also introduced. The experimental results confirm that REMEM and the proposed adaptive check pointing storage selection are promising in both performance, reliability and scalability.