Shared logging services for fault-tolerant distributed computing

Recovery logs are an important facility for fault-tolerant distributed computing that should be provided as an operating system service. However, a trivial adaptation of the log management component of traditional database systems is not adequate for a logging service shared by multiple resource managers. This position paper motivates operating system provided log services, and discusses some of the problems with such a service. We are implementing a new log service for the QuickSilver distributed operating system that addresses these problems.