Parallel & Distributed Systems

FALL 2022
Dr. Zeshan Iqbal
Lecture 11: Replication Control

Server-side Focus
• Concurrency Control = how to coordinate
multiple concurrent clients executing
operations (or transactions) with a server
Next:
• Replication Control = how to handle
operations (or transactions) when there are
objects are stored at multiple servers, with or
without replication

1
 Replication: What and Why
• Replication = An object has identical copies, each
maintained by a separate server
– Copies are called “replicas”
• Why replication?
– Fault-tolerance: With k replicas of each object, can
tolerate failure of any (k-1) servers in the system
– Load balancing: Spread read/write operations out over
the k replicas => load lowered by a factor of k compared
to a single replica
– Replication => Higher Availability

Availability
• If each server is down a fraction f of the time
– Server’s failure probability
• With no replication, availability of object =
= Probability that single copy is up
= (1 – f)
• With k replicas, availability of object =
Probability that at least one replicas is up
= 1 – Probability that all replicas are down
= (1 – f k)

2
 Nines Availability
• With no replication, availability of object =
= (1 – f)
• With k replicas, availability of object =
= (1 – f k)
Availability Table
f=failure No replication k=3 replicas k=5 replicas
probability
0.1 90% 99.9% 99.999%

0.05 95% 99.9875% 6 Nines

0.01 99% 99.9999% 10 Nines

What’s the Catch?

• Challenge is to maintain two properties
1. Replication Transparency
– A client ought not to be aware of multiple copies
of objects existing on the server side
2. Replication Consistency
– All clients see single consistent copy of data, in
spite of replication
– For transactions, guarantee ACID

3
 Replication Transparency
Replicas of an
Front ends Replica 1 object O
provide replication
transparency
Client Front End
Replica 2
Client
Front End
Client Replica 3

Requests
(replies flow opposite)

Replication Consistency
• Two ways to forward updates from front-ends (FEs) to
replica group
– Passive Replication: uses a primary replica (master)
– Active Replication: treats all replicas identically
• Both approaches use the concept of “Replicated State
Machines”
– Each replica’s code runs the same state machine
– Multiple copies of the same State Machine begun in the
Start state, and receiving the same Inputs in the same order
will arrive at the same State having generated the same
Outputs. [Schneider 1990]

4
 Passive Replication
• Master => total ordering of all updates
Replica 1 • On master failure, run election

Client Front End

Replica 2 Master (elected leader)

Client
Front End
Client Replica 3

Requests
(replies flow opposite)

Active Replication
Multicast
Front ends Replica 1 inside
provide replication Replica group
transparency

Client Front End

Replica 2

Client
Front End
Client Replica 3

Requests
(replies flow opposite)

10

5
 Active Replication Using Concepts
You’ve Learnt earlier
• Can use any flavor of multicast ordering, depending on
application
– FIFO ordering
– Causal ordering
– Total ordering
– Hybrid ordering
• Total or Hybrid (*-Total) ordering + Replicated State
machines approach
– => all replicas reflect the same sequence of updates to the
object
11

• Active Replication Using Concepts

You’ve Learnt earlier (2)
• What about failures?
– Use virtual synchrony (i.e., view synchrony)
• Virtual synchrony with total ordering for
multicasts =>
– All replicas see all failures/joins/leaves and all
multicasts in the same order
– Could also use causal (or even FIFO) ordering if
application can tolerate it

12

6
 Transactions and Replication
• One-copy serializability
– A concurrent execution of transactions in a replicated database
is one-copy-serializable if it is equivalent to a serial execution
of these transactions over a single logical copy of the database.
– (Or) The effect of transactions performed by clients on
replicated objects should be the same as if they had been
performed one at a time on a single set of objects (i.e., 1 replica
per object).
• In a non-replicated system, transactions appear to be
performed one at a time in some order.
– Correctness means serial equivalence of transactions
• When objects are replicated, transaction systems for
correctness need one-copy serializability
13

Example 1
Site A Site B Site C
x x, y x, y, z
T1: x ← 20 T2: Read(x) T3: Read(x)
Write(x) y ← x+y Read(y)
Commit Write(y) z ← (x∗y)/100
Consider the three histories: Commit Write(z)
Commit
HA={W1(xA), C1}
HB={W1(xB), C1, R2(xB), W2(yB), C2}
HC={W1(xC),C1 , W2(yC), C2, R3(xC), R3(yC),W3(zC), C3}

Global history non-serializable: HB: T1→T2, HC: T2→T3→T1 (serialization order)

Mutually consistent: Assume xA=xB=xC=10, yB=yC=15,zC=7 to begin; in the end
xA=xB=xC=20, yB=yC=35,zC=7

14

7
 Next

• Committing transactions with

distributed servers

15

Transactions with Distributed

Servers
Server 1
Transaction T Object A
write(A,1);
write(B,2); Object B
… .
write(Y, 25); .
write(Z, 26); .
commit
Server 13
Object Y

Object Z

16

8
 Transactions With Distributed
Servers
• Transaction T may touch objects that reside on
different servers
• When T tries to commit
– Need to ensure all these servers commit their updates
from T => T will commit
– Or none of these servers commit => T will abort
• What problem is this?

17

Transactions With Distributed

Servers
• Transaction T may touch objects that reside on
different servers
• When T tries to commit
– Need to ensure all these servers commit their updates
from T => T will commit
– Or none of these servers commit => T will abort
• What problem is this?
– Consensus!
– (It’s also called the “Atomic Commit problem”)

18

9
 One-phase Commit
Coordinator Server 1
Transaction T Server Object A
write(A,1);
.
write(B,2); Object B
.
… . .
write(Y, 25); .
write(Z, 26); .
commit
Server 13
Object Y
• Special server called “Coordinator”
initiates atomic commit
Object Z
• Tells other servers to either
commit or abort

19

One-phase Commit: Issues

• Server with object has no say in whether
transaction commits or aborts
– If object corrupted, it just cannot commit (while other
servers have committed)
• Server may crash before receiving commit
message, with some updates still in memory

20

10
 Two-phase Commit
Coordinator
Server …
Server 1 Server 13
Prepare

21

Two-phase Commit
Coordinator
Server …
Server 1 Server 13
Prepare

• Save updates to disk

• Respond with “Yes” or “No”

22

11
 Two-phase Commit
Coordinator
Server …
Server 1 Server 13
Prepare

• Save updates to disk

• Respond with “Yes” or “No”
If any
“No” vote Abort
or timeout
before all
(13) votes

23

Two-phase Commit
Coordinator
Server …
Server 1 Server 13
Prepare

• Save updates to disk

• Respond with “Yes” or “No”
All (13)
“Yes” Commit
votes
received
within
timeout?

24

12
 Two-phase Commit
Coordinator
Server …
Server 1 Server 13
Prepare

• Save updates to disk

• Respond with “Yes” or “No”
All (13)
“Yes” Commit
votes • Wait! Can’t commit or abort
received before receiving next message!
within
timeout?

25

Two-phase Commit
Coordinator
Server …
Server 1 Server 13
Prepare

• Save updates to disk

• Respond with “Yes” or “No”
All (13)
“Yes” Commit
votes • Commit updates from disk
received to store
within
OK
timeout?

26

13
 Failures in Two-phase Commit
• If server voted Yes, it cannot commit unilaterally before
receiving Commit message
• If server voted No, can abort right away (why?)
• To deal with server crashes
– Each server saves tentative updates into permanent storage, right
before replying Yes/No in first phase. Retrievable after crash
recovery.
• To deal with coordinator crashes
– Coordinator logs all decisions and received/sent messages on disk
– After recovery or new election => new coordinator takes over

27

Failures in Two-phase Commit (2)

• To deal with Prepare message loss
– The server may decide to abort unilaterally after a timeout for first
phase (server will vote No, and so coordinator will also eventually
abort)
• To deal with Yes/No message loss, coordinator aborts
the transaction after a timeout (pessimistic!). It must
announce Abort message to all.
• To deal with Commit or Abort message loss
– Server can poll coordinator (repeatedly)

28

14
 Using Paxos in Distributed Servers
Atomic Commit
•Can instead use Paxos to decide whether to commit a
transaction or not
•But need to ensure that if any server votes No, everyone
aborts
Ordering updates
•Paxos can also be used by replica group (for an object)
to order all updates – iteratively do:
– Server proposes message for next sequence number
– Group reaches consensus (or not)

29

Summary
• Multiple servers in cloud
– Replication for Fault-tolerance
– Load balancing across objects
• Replication Flavors using concepts we learnt
earlier
– Active replication
– Passive replication
• Transactions and distributed servers
– Two phase commit

30

15