Leaderless State-Machine Replication: Specification, Properties, Limits (Extended Version)

08/06/2020
by   Tuanir França Rezende, et al.
0

Modern Internet services commonly replicate critical data across several geographical locations using state-machine replication (SMR). Due to their reliance on a leader replica, classical SMR protocols offer limited scalability and availability in this setting. To solve this problem, recent protocols follow instead a leaderless approach, in which each replica is able to make progress using a quorum of its peers. In this paper, we study this new emerging class of SMR protocols and states some of their limits. We first propose a framework that captures the essence of leaderless state-machine replication (Leaderless SMR). Then, we introduce a set of desirable properties for these protocols: (R)eliability, (O)ptimal (L)atency and (L)oad Balancing. We show that protocols matching all of the ROLL properties are subject to a trade-off between performance and reliability. We also establish a lower bound on the message delay to execute a command in protocols optimal for the ROLL properties. This lower bound explains the persistent chaining effect observed in experimental results.

READ FULL TEXT

Please sign up or login with your details

Forgot password? Click here to reset