Linux-CR: Transparent Application Checkpoint-Restart in Linux

Application checkpoint-restart is the ability to save the state of a running application so that it can later resume its execution from the time of the checkpoint. Application checkpoint-restart provides many useful benefits including fault recovery, advanced resources sharing, dynamic load balancing and improved service availability. For several years the Linux kernel has been gaining the necessary groundwork for such functionality, and now support for kernel based transparent checkpoint-restart is also maturing. In this paper we present the implementation of Linux checkpoint-restart, which aims for inclusion in Linux mainline. We explain the usage model and describe the user interfaces and some key kernel interfaces. Finally, we present preliminary performance results of the implementation.