A replication-transparent remote invocation protocol

Abstract

Although many algorithms and implementations of replicated services have been developed, most have embedded aspects of the replication management in the invocation protocol. This makes it extremely difficult to modify the replication protocol without changing the protocol used by the clients, and causes an undesirable violation of both transparency and modularity. The GRIP protocol supports the fault-tolerant remote invocation of replicated services, providing not only the usual location transparency but also transparency of replication semantics. Our approach is independent of the details of the replica control protocol used to maintain the consistency of server replicas. We use a lightweight remote invocation protocol in order to minimize the impact on the client of issues such as scale and replication consistency maintenance. Furthermore, unlike most previous systems we provide explicit support for weakly consistent replication protocols. GRIP is designed as a collection of modular services, which can be configured according to the needs of the application.<>