2021/06/16 by Rachid Guerraoui, Guerraoui, Rachid, Antoine Murat +3
Computer Science · #Advanced Data Storage Technologies #Cloud Computing and Resource Management #Distributed #Distributed systems and fault tolerance #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Parallel #and Cluster Computing (cs.DC)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2106.08676
openalex publication_date 2021/06/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Modern data centers are becoming increasingly equipped with RDMA-capable NICs. These devices enable distributed systems to rely on algorithms designed for shared memory. RDMA allows consensus to terminate within a few microsecond in failure-free scenarios, yet, RDMA-optimized algorithms still use expensive two-sided operations in case of failure. In this work, we present a new leader-based consensus algorithm that relies solely on one-sided RDMA verbs. Our algorithm is based on Paxos, it decides in a single one-sided RDMA operation in the common case, and changes leader also in a single one-sided RDMA operation in case of failure. We implement our algorithm in the form of an SMR system named Velos, and we evaluated our system against the state-of-the-art competitor Mu. Compared to Mu, our solution adds a small overhead of approximately 0.6 microseconds in failure-free executions and shines during failover periods during which it is 13 times faster in changing leader.