"Rabia: Simplifying State-Machine Replication through Randomization" by Haochen Pan, Jesse Tuglu et al.
 

Computer Science

Rabia: Simplifying State-Machine Replication through Randomization

Haochen Pan, The University of Chicago
Jesse Tuglu, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Neo Zhou, Boston College
Tianshu Wang, Duke University
Yicheng Shen, Boston College
Xiong Zheng, Google LLC
Joseph Tassarotti, Boston College
Lewis Tseng, Boston College
Roberto Palmieri, Lehigh University

Abstract

We introduce Rabia, a simple and high performance framework for implementing state-machine replication (SMR) within a datacenter. The main innovation of Rabia is in using randomization to simplify the design. Rabia provides the following two features: (i) It does not need any fail-over protocol and supports trivial auxiliary protocols like log compaction, snapshotting, and reconfiguration, components that are often considered the most challenging when developing SMR systems; and (ii) It provides high performance, up to 1.5x higher throughput than the closest competitor (i.e., EPaxos) in a favorable setup (same availability zone with three replicas) and is comparable with a larger number of replicas or when deployed in multiple availability zones.