Process Migration in the Sprite Operating System

This paper describes a process migration facility for the Sprite operating system. In order to provide location-transparent remote execution, Sprite associates with each process a distinguished home node, which provides kernel services to the process throughout the process's lifetime. System calls that depend on the location of a process are forwarded to the process's home node. Performance measurements based on a few simple benchmarks show that remote execution using the home-node model is efficient as long as the number of system calls that must be forwarded home is small; this appears to be the case as long as file-system-related calls can be handled without involving the home node. The benchmarks also show that the cost of migrating a process can vary from a fraction of a second to many seconds; it is determined primarily by the number of dirty virtual memory pages and file blocks associated with the process. *This work was supported in pa.rt by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency under contract N00039-85-C-0269, in pa.rt by the National Science Foundation under grant ECS-8351961, and in part by General Motors Corporation. Report Documentation Page Form Approved OMB No. 0704-0188 Public reporting burden for the collection of information is estimated to average 1 hour per response, including the time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing the collection of information. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burden, to Washington Headquarters Services, Directorate for Information Operations and Reports, 1215 Jefferson Davis Highway, Suite 1204, Arlington VA 22202-4302. Respondents should be aware that notwithstanding any other provision of law, no person shall be subject to a penalty for failing to comply with a collection of information if it does not display a currently valid OMB control number. 1. REPORT DATE 11 FEB 1987 2. REPORT TYPE 3. DATES COVERED 00-00-1987 to 00-00-1987 4. TITLE AND SUBTITLE Process Migration in the Sprite Operating System 5a. CONTRACT NUMBER