Database high availability using SHADOW systems

Hot standby techniques are widely used to implement highly available database systems. These techniques make use of two separate copies of the database, an active copy and a backup that is managed by the standby. The two database copies are stored independently and synchronized by the database systems that manage them. However, database systems deployed in computing clouds often have access to reliable persistent storage that can be shared by multiple servers. In this paper we consider how hot standby techniques can be improved in such settings. We present SHADOW systems, a novel approach to hot standby high availability. Like other database systems that use shared storage, SHADOW systems push the task of managing database replication out of the database system and into the underlying storage service, simplifying the database system. Unlike other systems, SHADOW systems also provide write offloading, which frees the active database system from the need to update the persistent database. Instead, that responsibility is placed on the standby system. We present the results of a performance evaluation using a SHADOW prototype on Amazon's cloud, showing that write offloading enables SHADOW to outperform traditional hot standby replication and even a standalone DBMS that does not provide high availability.