The Performance of Available Copy Protocols for the Management of Replicated Data

Abstract

Available copy protocols guarantee the consistency of replicated data objects against any combination of non-Byzantine failures that do not result in partial communication failures. While the original available copy protocol assumed instantaneous detection of failures and instantaneous propagation of this information, more realistic protocols that do not rely on these assumptions have been devised. Two such protocols are investigated in this paper: a naive available copy (NAC) protocol that does not maintain any state information, and an optimistic available copy (OAC) protocol that only maintains state information at write and recovery times. Markov models are used to compare the performance of these two protocols with that of the original available copy protocol. These protocols are shown to perform nearly as well as the original available copy protocol, which is shown to perform much better than quorum consensus protocols.