Improving the Robustness of Cluster-based Network Services Using Peer-to-peer Design Principles

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Cluster-based network servers are a cost-effective platform forconstructing large-scale network services. However, service clustering presentssignificant challenges to system designers. Many components of the clusteringsupport are often implemented using centralized or hierarchical architectures, inorder to meet desired performance, consistency, and policy requirements. Theeffectivenessof these approaches has been demonstrated under well-controlledenvironments,but customized enhancements are often needed to deal with transientcomponent failures and fluctuating service loads.Peer-to-peer systems are distributed systems without any centralizedcontrolor hierarchical organization, and with functionally equivalent softwarerunningat each node. The primary goal of this project is to improve therobustness ofcluster-based network services using peer-to-peer system designprinciples.Specifically, this effort exploits three main principles of peer-to-peersystemdesign: functionally symmetric architecture, slow-scaling overhead, andnon-determinism. This project covers various components in serviceclusteringsupport, including service location lookup, membership management,cluster-wideresource management, and replication consistency support.Techniques investigated in this project can greatly benefit networkservicedesigners, for whom it can offer significant improvements in systemrobustness.In a broader context, this research complements the ongoing efforts ofbuildingglobal-scale peer-to-peer systems and services. In addition, thisprojectdirectly benefits systems-area instruction improvement at the PI'sinstitution.