Collaborative Research: CSR-PDOS: Designing Large-Scale Distributed Systems for Realistic Failure Models

大规模的分布式系统现在正在定期构建和部署。由于规模庞大，它们由许多组件组成--计算机、通信基础设施、存储设备等--所有这些组件都容易出现故障（即异常的不确定性行为）。设计大规模系统来有效地科普此类故障是一个困难和持续的问题;要有效地做到这一点，需要更深入地了解它们实际上是如何失败的。为了获得这样的理解，PI正在收集三个实际大型系统的故障信息：数据网格，桌面网格和对等协作备份系统。这些数据是通过与其他资助项目（如BIRN项目）合作或通过实际部署系统本身收集的。收集的故障数据被用来开发更抽象的故障模型，可以用作算法和系统开发的基础。PI使用这些故障模型来了解如何改进所研究的系统（例如，通过比基于不太精确的故障模型的原始系统具有更高的可用性，更低的开销或更好的性能）。PI通过网络提供他们收集的所有故障信息（匿名后）。正在通过文件提供故障模型和规程，这些文件在准备就绪时也通过项目网站分发。这些信息对设计、建造和部署新的大规模系统的人很有意义。

Large-scale distributed systems are now being regularly built and deployed. Being large-scale, they are comprised of many components - computers, communications infrastructure, storage devices, and so on - all of which are prone to failure (that is, exceptional nondeterministic behavior). Designing large-scale systems to cope efficiently with such failures is a difficult and ongoing problem; to do so effectively requires a much deeper understanding of how they actually fail. To gain such understanding, the PIs are collecting information on the failures of three actual large-scale systems: a data grid, a desktop grid, and a peer to peer cooperative backup system. This data is being collected either through cooperation with other funded projects (eg, the BIRN project) or by actually deploying the system themselves. The collected failure data is being used to develop more abstract failure models that can be used as the basis of algorithm and system development. The PIs are using these failure models to understand how the systems being studied can be improved (for example, by having higher availability, lower overhead, or better performance than the original systems which are based on much less precise failure models). The PIs are making available all the failure information that they collect (after being anonymized) via the web. Failure models and protocols are being made available through papers, which are also distributed when ready via the project web site. This information is of interest to those designing, constructing and deploying new large-scale systems.