From: vander@flab.fujitsu.co.jp (Mike van der Velden)
Newsgroups: comp.os.research
Subject: Summary:  File Replication
Date: 29 Aug 1992 05:02:55 GMT
Organization: Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd., Kawasaki, Japan
NNTP-Posting-Host: ftp.cse.ucsc.edu
Originator: osr@ftp

Earlier this month, I wrote:

> Does anyone have or know of some documentation about file replication,
> especially within a Unix-like environment?
> 
> I will summarize to the net if there is interest.
> 
> Thanks in advance for your time.

And now, thr promised summary.  Thanks to the following people for
taking the time to respond.

	page@ficus.cs.ucla.edu (Thomas Page)
	johnh@ficus.cs.ucla.edu (John Heidemann)
	paris@cs.uh.edu (Jehan-Francois Paris)
	mootaz@cs.rice.edu (Elmootazbellah Nabil Elnozahy)
	khattra@sfu.ca (Taj Khattra)
	Bob Gruber <gruber@thor.lcs.mit.edu>
	akyurek@cs.umd.edu (Sedat Akyurek)
	Jonathan Spencer <J.M.Spencer@newcastle.ac.uk>
	esprit@netcom.com (Alan F. Perry)


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From: page@ficus.cs.ucla.edu (Thomas Page)

> Our group at UCLA has produced a replicated file system, called Ficus,
> for Sun OS.  If interested, you can find papers about it available via
> ftp from ftp.cs.ucla.edu in the director pub/ficus.  The tech reports
> from 1991 or 1992 are the most relevent.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: johnh@ficus.cs.ucla.edu (John Heidemann)

> You might be interested in the Ficus research here at UCLA.
> We provide optimistic file replication under SunOS.
> Technical reports are available by anonymous ftp from ftp.cs.ucla.edu.
> 
> If you wish to provide replication by hand in a stock Unix system
> you should check out rdist(1).


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: paris@cs.uh.edu (Jehan-Francois Paris)

> There are for the moment much more proposals of replicated file systems
> than actual implementations.  The last Symposium on Operating Systems
> Principles had two papers on file replication.  The first paper,
> "Disconnected Operation in the Coda File System, " by J. J. Kistler and
> M. Satyanarayanan describes a system implementing an optimistic
> replication protocol, i.e., a system trading the risk of inconsistent
> updates for higher data availabilities.  The second paper, "Replication
> in the Harp File System," describes a replicated file system based
> on the pessimistic approach.
> 
> Most papers on file replication focus on the design of the protocols
> used for guaranteeing the consistency of the replicated data.  I do
> not know of any recent bibliography on the topic but wrote last year
> what I think is a decent survey of data replication for the Encyclopedia
> of Microcomputing.  Please let me know if you cannot get a copy of it.


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From: mootaz@cs.rice.edu (Elmootazbellah Nabil Elnozahy)

> Look at 
> "A Highly Available Network File Server", by A. Bhide, E. Elnozahy,
> and S. Morgan, Winter Usenix 91.
> 
> This shows that using replication is not necessary to obtain
> high availability.


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From: khattra@sfu.ca (Taj Khattra)

> A nice survey article is
> 
>   Tait, C.D., _Techniques for Building Highly Available Distributed
> 	      File Systems_, CUCS-497-89.
> 
>   It can be anonymous ftp'ed from cs.columbia.edu in 
>   /pub/reports/reports-1989/cucs-497-89.ps.Z


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Bob Gruber <gruber@thor.lcs.mit.edu>

> Well, you could start with our paper on a replicated NFS server:
> 
> 	"Replication in the Harp File System"
> 	Liskov, Ghemaway, Gruber, Johnson, Shrira, and Williams
> 	In the Proceedings of the 13th ACM Symposium on Operating
> 	System Principles (SOSP), October 1991.
> 
> This paper references other replicated file systems; see
> the related work section.


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From: akyurek@cs.umd.edu (Sedat Akyurek)

> I don't know if you are looking for software/systems that do replication or
> works/papers on this topic but here are some references to some
> papers on  this topic :
> 
>    Liskov, Barbara, et. al., ``Replication in the Harp File System,''
>    Proceedings of the 13th ACM Symposium on Operating System Principles,
>    October, 1991.
> 
>    Lo, Sai-Lai, ``Ivy: A Study on Replicating Data for Performance
>    Improvement,'' Technical Report, Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Concurrent
>    Computing Department, HPL-CSP-90-48, December 1990.
> 
>    Page, Thomas W., et. al., ``Management of Replicated Volume Location in
>    the Ficus Replicated File System,'' USENIX Conference Proceedings, Summer
>    1991.
> 
> I am working on replication in block level (on the same disk) for reducing
> seek latency (and thus for reducing disk request response times).
> An introduction to my work is in : 
> 
>    Akyurek, Sedat, Kenneth Salem, ``Placing Replicated Data to Reduce Seek
>    Delays,'' USENIX File Systems Workshop Proceedings, May 1992.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Jonathan Spencer <J.M.Spencer@newcastle.ac.uk>

> Try: Mark Little's PhD thesis about replication in object oriented
> distributed systems, dated Sep 1991. Should be available through
> inter-library loans. (Oh, he did it here :-)
> 
> Mail  : Computing Lab., University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, NE1 7RU, England
> ARPA  : J.M.Spencer%newcastle.ac.uk@cs.ucl.ac.uk
> JANET : J.M.Spencer@newcastle.ac.uk
> UUCP  : !uknet!newcastle.ac.uk!J.M.Spencer            Phone : +91 222 8229


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: esprit@netcom.com (Alan F. Perry)

> I am sure that you know that file replication is done in Locus.  


--
Mike van der Velden
Distributed Systems Laboratory, Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd., Kawasaki, Japan
e-mail: vander@tokyo.hi.flab.fujitsu.co.jp

ps. If you send me a picture postcard      Mike van der Velden
    from your area to the address at       Fujitsu Unoki Dormitory, room 227
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    November 15, 1992