@article {1305, title = {Checkpointing Strategies for Shared High-Performance Computing Platforms}, journal = {International Journal of Networking and Computing}, volume = {9}, number = {1}, year = {2019}, pages = {28{\textendash}52}, abstract = {Input/output (I/O) from various sources often contend for scarcely available bandwidth. For example, checkpoint/restart (CR) protocols can help to ensure application progress in failure-prone environments. However, CR I/O alongside an application{\textquoteright}s normal, requisite I/O can increase I/O contention and might negatively impact performance. In this work, we consider different aspects (system-level scheduling policies and hardware) that optimize the overall performance of concurrently executing CR-based applications that share I/O resources. We provide a theoretical model and derive a set of necessary constraints to minimize the global waste on a given platform. Our results demonstrate that Young/Daly{\textquoteright}s optimal checkpoint interval, despite providing a sensible metric for a single, undisturbed application, is not sufficient to optimally address resource contention at scale. We show that by combining optimal checkpointing periods with contention-aware system-level I/O scheduling strategies, we can significantly improve overall application performance and maximize the platform throughput. Finally, we evaluate how specialized hardware, namely burst buffers, may help to mitigate the I/O contention problem. Overall, these results provide critical analysis and direct guidance on how to design efficient, CR ready, large -scale platforms without a large investment in the I/O subsystem.}, issn = {2185-2847}, url = {http://www.ijnc.org/index.php/ijnc/article/view/195}, author = {Thomas Herault and Yves Robert and Aurelien Bouteiller and Dorian Arnold and Kurt Ferreira and George Bosilca and Jack Dongarra} }