Efficient compute node-local replication mechanisms for NVRAM-centric data structures

The long-awaited nonvolatile random-access memory technology NVRAM is finally publicly available on the market and requires significant changes to the architecture of in-memory database systems. Since such hybrid DRAM–NVRAM database systems may be able to keep the primary data solely persistent in the NVRAM, efficient replication mechanisms need to be considered to prevent base data losses and to guarantee high availability in case of various persistent memory failures. In this article, we argue for a software-based replication approach and present compute node-local mechanisms to provide the building blocks—generally available for most platforms—for an efficient NVRAM replication with a low latency and minimal throughput penalty. Within our evaluation, based on both real NVRAM hardware and DRAM-backed emulation, we measured up to 10 × less overhead for our optimized replication mechanisms compared to the basic replication mechanism of the Intel persistent memory development kit PMDK. Finally, we present a lightweight switching approach for enabling the adaptive online selection of the best replication mechanism for a given situation.