Report Number: CS-TR-90-1298
Institution: Stanford University, Department of Computer Science
Title: Leases: an efficient fault-tolerant mechanism for distributed file cache consistency.
Author: Gray, Cary G.
Author: Cheriton, David R.
Date: January 1990
Abstract: Caching introduces the overhead and complexity of ensuring consistency, reducing some of its performance benefits. In a distributed system, caching must deal with the additional complications of commumcation and host failures. Leases are proposed as a time-based mechanism that provides efficient consistent access to cached data in distributed systems. Non-Byzantine failures affect performance, not correctness ,with their effect minimized by short leases. An analytic model and an evaluation for file access in the V system show that leases of short duration provide good performance. The impact of leases on performance grows more significant in systems of larger scale and higher processor performance.
http://i.stanford.edu/pub/cstr/reports/cs/tr/90/1298/CS-TR-90-1298.pdf