Node-capability-aware replica management for peer-to-peer grids

Data objects have to be replicated in large-scale distributed systems for reasons of fault tolerance, availability, and performance. Furthermore, computations may have to be scheduled on these objects, when these objects are part of a grid computation. Although replication mechanism for unstructured peer-to-peer (P2P) systems can place replicas on capable nodes, they may not be able to provide deterministic guarantees on searching. Replication mechanisms in structured P2P systems provide deterministic guarantees on searching but do not address node capability in replica placement. We propose Virat, a node-capability-aware P2P middleware for managing replicas in large-scale distributed systems. Virat uses a unique two-layered architecture that builds a structured overlay over an unstructured P2P layer, combining the advantages of both structured and unstructured P2P systems. Detailed performance comparison is made with a replication mechanism realized over OpenDHT, a state-of-the-art structured P2P system. We show that the 99th percentile response time for Virat does not exceed 600 ms, whereas for OpenDHT, it goes beyond 2000 ms in our test bed, created specifically for the aforementioned comparison. © 2009 IEEE.