Flexible, Cost-EffectiveMembership Agreement in Synchronous Systems

Abstract

This paper presents a processor group membership protocol for fault-tolerant distributed real-time systems that utilize periodic, time-triggered scheduling for sending messages over the system's communication network. The protocol allows fault-free nodes to reach agreement on the operational state of all nodes in the presence of fail-silent or fail-reporting node failures as well as network failures (lost or corrupted messages). The protocol is based on the principle that each message sent by a node in the membership is acknowledged by k other nodes in a system of n nodes, where k can be set to any number between 2 and n - 1. Agreement on node failure (membership departure) and agreement on node recovery (membership reintegration) are handled by two different mechanisms. Agreement on departure is guaranteed if no more than f = k - 1 failures occur in the same communication round, while at most one node can be reintegrated into the membership per communication round