Abstraction Checkpointing Levels: Problems and Solutions

Abstract

A common approach to guarantee an acceptable level of fault tolerance in scientific computing is the checkpointing. In this strategy: when a task fails, it is allowed to be restarted from the recently checked pointed state rather than from the beginning, which reduces the system loss and ensures the reliability. Several systems use the checkpointing to ensure the fault tolerance such as HPC, distributed discrete event simulation and Clouds. The literature proposes several classifications of checkpointing techniques using different metrics and criteria. In this paper we focus on the classification based on abstraction level. In this classification the checkpointing is categorized into two principal types: application level and system level. Each of these levels has its advantages and suffers from many problems. The difference between our present paper and the others surveys proposed in the literature is that: in this paper we will study each level in details. We will also study and analyze some works that propose solutions to solve the problems and exceed the limits of each abstraction level.