A locking facility for parallel systems

Abstract

Clustered and parallel architectures provide the ability to construct systems of high capacity, scalable features, and high availability. In order to provide high throughput in a shared-disk architecture, fundamental advances in multisystem locking technologies are required. This paper describes a locking architecture and operating system support provided for the locking services in a clustered environment. Although initially targeted toward database systems, the functions are general enough for use in many other environments. The paper also describes the products that have deployed this technology.