Correct, Fast Remote Persistence

TL;DR

This paper provides a comprehensive taxonomy of remote persistent memory configurations and methods to ensure correct and fast persistence of RDMA updates, highlighting the significant performance trade-offs involved.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed taxonomy of system configurations and methods for remote persistence, clarifying the implications of different setups on correctness and performance.

Findings

Methods vary significantly across configurations

Performance trade-offs depend on server setup

Guidelines for correct remote persistence are provided

Abstract

Persistence of updates to remote byte-addressable persistent memory (PM), using RDMA operations (RDMA updates), is a poorly understood subject. Visibility of RDMA updates on the remote server is not the same as persistence of those updates. The remote server's configuration has significant implications on what it means for RDMA updates to be persistent on the remote server. This leads to significant implications on methods needed to correctly persist those updates. This paper presents a comprehensive taxonomy of system configurations and the corresponding methods to ensure correct remote persistence of RDMA updates. We show that the methods for correct, fast remote persistence vary dramatically, with corresponding performance trade offs, between different remote server configurations.