MDC+: A Cooperative Approach to Memory-Efficient Fork-Based Checkpointing for In-Memory Database Systems

Consistent checkpointing is a critical for in-memory databases (IMDBs) but its resource-intensive nature poses challenges for small- and medium-sized deployments in cloud environments, where memory utilization directly affects operational costs. Although traditional fork-based checkpointing offers m...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on computers Vol. 74; no. 9; pp. 3059 - 3071
Main Authors: Min, Cheolgi, Park, Jiwoong, Yeom, Heon Young, Jung, Hyungsoo
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: IEEE 01.09.2025
Subjects:
checkpoint
Checkpointing
Cloud computing
copy-on-write
Costs
Cows
In-memory database
Linux
Memory management
Optimization
Resource management
snapshot
Throughput
Writing
ISSN:0018-9340, 1557-9956
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Consistent checkpointing is a critical for in-memory databases (IMDBs) but its resource-intensive nature poses challenges for small- and medium-sized deployments in cloud environments, where memory utilization directly affects operational costs. Although traditional fork-based checkpointing offers merits in terms of performance and implementation simplicity, it incurs a considerable rise in memory footprint during checkpointing, particularly under update-intensive workloads. Memory provisioning emerges as a practical remedy to handle peak demands without compromising performance, albeit with potential concerns related to memory over-provisioning. In this article, we propose MDC+, a memory-efficient fork-based checkpointing scheme designed to maintain a reasonable memory footprint during checkpointing by leveraging collaboration among an IMDB, a user-level memory allocator, and the operating system. We explore two key techniques within the checkpointing scheme: (1) memory dump-based checkpointing, which enables early memory release, and (2) hint-based segregated memory allocation, which isolates immutable and updatable data to minimize page duplication. Our evaluation demonstrates that MDC+ significantly lowers peak memory footprint during checkpointing without affecting throughput or checkpointing time.
ISSN:0018-9340
1557-9956
DOI:10.1109/TC.2025.3584520