An on-line algorithm for checkpoint placement

Abstract

Abstract-Checkpointing enables us to reduce the time to recover from a fault by saving intermediate states of the program in a reliable storage. The length of the intervals between checkpoints affects the execution time of programs. On one hand, long intervals lead to long reprocessing time, while, on the other hand, too frequent checkpointing leads to high checkpointing overhead. In this paper, we present an on-line algorithm for placement of checkpoints. The algorithm uses knowledge of the current cost of a checkpoint when it decides whether or not to place a checkpoint. The total overhead of the execution time when the proposed algorithm is used is smaller than the overhead when fixed intervals are used. Although the proposed algorithm uses only on-line knowledge about the cost of checkpointing, its behavior is close to the off-line optimal algorithm that uses a complete knowledge of checkpointing cost.

On Channel Failures, File Fragmentation Policies, and Heavy-Tailed Completion Times

“…Considering various model variations, several papers analyse the problem of optimal checkpointing to minimize average completion time; for example, [7]- [9], [19], [20], [25]- [27]. However, to the best of our knowledge, except for the recent work listed above, none of these papers analyse the completion time tail.…”

Checkpoint Placement Algorithms for Mobile Agent System

“…Instead of using the execution time as a metric, in [20], the authors presented an online algorithm for the placement of checkpoints. This algorithm keeps track of the size of the state of a program and a checkpoint is made when it is small.…”

Performance and effectiveness analysis of checkpointing in mobile environments

“…In [12], Krishna et al point out that the optimization criteria for checkpoint placement is to trade the benefits derived from checkpointing with the overhead imposed. Ziv and Bruck [24] present an online algorithm for placement of checkpoints. The algorithm keeps track of the state size of a program, and looks for points in the program where checkpoint placement is the most beneficiary.…”