The Design and Implementation of Process Recovery Mechanism Based on Xen

Abstract

A new approach, XenPR, was designed to protect and recover processes in a kernel crash. XenPR exploits the isolation feature in Xen to maintain a minor kernel image outside of the main OS kernel. When a crash happened to main kernel, the minor kernel will take over the business from it, save the process context and reboot the operating system. Then the applications can continue the execution seamlessly or only with moderate interruption. Our evaluation shows XenPR reduces the computing loss in system failure and improves the reliability and availability of programs.