Distributed systems are notorious for harboring subtle bugs. Verification can, in principle, eliminate these bugs, but it has historically been difficult to apply at full-program scale, much less distributed system scale. We describe a methodology for building practical and provably correct distributed systems based on a unique blend of temporal logic of actions-style state-machine refinement and Hoare-logic verification. We demonstrate the methodology on a complex implementation of a Paxos-based replicated state machine library and a lease-based sharded key-value store. We prove that each obeys a concise safety specification as well as desirable liveness requirements. Each implementation achieves performance competitive with a reference system. With our methodology and lessons learned, we aim to raise the standard for distributed systems from “tested” to “correct.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Distributed systems are notorious for harboring subtle bugs. Verification can, in principle, eliminate these bugs, but it has historically been difficult to apply at full-program scale, much less distributed system scale. We describe a methodology for building practical and provably correct distributed systems based on a unique blend of temporal logic of actions-style state-machine refinement […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","footnotes":""},"msr-content-type":[3],"msr-research-highlight":[246574],"research-area":[13560,13547],"msr-publication-type":[193715],"msr-product-type":[],"msr-focus-area":[],"msr-platform":[],"msr-download-source":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-field-of-study":[],"msr-conference":[],"msr-journal":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-pillar":[],"class_list":["post-395171","msr-research-item","type-msr-research-item","status-publish","hentry","msr-research-highlight-award","msr-research-area-programming-languages-software-engineering","msr-research-area-systems-and-networking","msr-locale-en_us"],"msr_publishername":"","msr_edition":"","msr_affiliation":"","msr_published_date":"2017-7-1","msr_host":"","msr_duration":"","msr_version":"","msr_speaker":"","msr_other_contributors":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_pages_string":"","msr_chapter":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_journal":"Communications of the ACM","msr_volume":"60","msr_number":"","msr_editors":"","msr_series":"","msr_issue":"","msr_organization":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_notes":"","msr_highlight_text":"CACM Research Highlight","msr_release_tracker_id":"","msr_original_fields_of_study":"","msr_download_urls":"","msr_external_url":"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/220332220","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_longbiography":"","msr_microsoftintellectualproperty":1,"msr_main_download":"395180","msr_publicationurl":"","msr_doi":"","msr_publication_uploader":[{"type":"file","viewUrl":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/ironfleet-cacm.pdf","id":"395180","title":"ironfleet-cacm","label_id":"243109","label":0}],"msr_related_uploader":"","msr_attachments":[],"msr-author-ordering":[{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Chris Hawblitzel","user_id":31425,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Chris Hawblitzel"},{"type":"text","value":"Jon Howell","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"text","value":"Manos Kapritsos","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Jay Lorch","user_id":32732,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Jay Lorch"},{"type":"text","value":"Bryan Parno","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Justine Stephenson","user_id":32951,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Justine Stephenson"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Srinath Setty","user_id":33709,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Srinath Setty"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Brian Zill","user_id":31326,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Brian Zill"}],"msr_impact_theme":[],"msr_research_lab":[],"msr_event":[],"msr_group":[144927],"msr_project":[171410],"publication":[],"video":[],"download":[],"msr_publication_type":"article","related_content":{"projects":[{"ID":171410,"post_title":"Ironclad","post_name":"ironclad","post_type":"msr-project","post_date":"2014-10-02 15:36:17","post_modified":"2021-03-23 10:35:39","post_status":"publish","permalink":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/project\/ironclad\/","post_excerpt":"An Ironclad App lets a user securely transmit her data to a remote machine with the guarantee that every instruction executed on that machine adheres to a formal abstract specification of the app's behavior. 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