Reverse Replication of Virtual Machines (rRVM) for Low Latency and High Availability Services

Virtualization supplies a straightforward approach to high availability through iterative replications of virtual machine (VM) checkpoints that encapsulate the protected services. Unfortunately, traditional VM replication solutions suffer from deficiencies in either response latency or state recovery consistency, which constrains the adoption of VM replication in production. In this paper, we extend the function of the secondary host to be the primary recipient of network requests so that the state of the primary VM (PVM) is retained by the secondary host in the form of network packets. In doing this, we redesign the typical consistency model and network architecture for virtual machine replication. Specifically, the secondary host is set for network redirection and packets recording. Should the primary host fail, the recorded packets are used to recreate the state on the secondary host. Experiments in this research demonstrate simultaneously strong recovery consistency and low response latency in our real-time fault tolerance system. We name the system reverse replication of virtual machines (rRVM).