Consistency-driven probabilistic quorum system construction for improving operation availability

Abstract

Pessimistic quorum-based data replication strategies generally strive for maximizing operation availabilities while adhering to a strict consistency notion. Unfortunately, their operation availabilities are strictly upper-bounded. Probabilistically relaxing the consistency notion permits to overcome this bound, introducing probabilistic data replication strategies that allow for a data consistency vs. operation availabilities trade-off. We present two construction algorithms transforming strict quorum systems into probabilistic ones and compare them in terms of operation availabilities and degree of data consistency. © 2010 Springer.