Replica determinism in distributed real-time systems: A brief survey

Replication of entities is a convenient technique to achieve fault-tolerance. The problem of replica determinism thereby is to assure, that replicated entities show consistent behavior in the absence of failures. Possible sources for replica non-determinism as well as basic requirements and strategies to enforce replica determinism are presented. The problem of replica determinism enforcement under real-time constraints is surveyed in the context of the communication problem for distributed systems. Furthermore the close interdependence between replica determinism on the one side and synchronization strategies, handling of failures and redundancy preservation on the other side is reviewed. The impact of synchronous or asynchronous approaches on replication strategies is also discussed.

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