UCMS '13 - Maintaining Consistency in a Massively Parallel Environment

Maintaining Consistency in a Massively Parallel Environment Dinah McNutt, Google, Inc. Making changes to systems in a highly-distributed, massively parallel environment can result in system inconsistencies. Change requests can time out or result in error. It can also take hours for updates to get scheduled or complete. This talk describes how Google is using its proprietary package manager to maintain consistency across its server farm. We describe some of the design decisions and features that allow us to do things traditional package managers cannot in order to ensure consistency. We also discuss creative ways projects are leveraging the architecture and our infrastructure to distribute changes reliably and consistently. View the full UCMS '13 Program at https://www.usenix.org/conference/fcw13/glance