Secure and Scalable Replication in Phalanx

Phalanx is a software system for building a persistent, survivable data repository that supports shared data abstractions (e.g., variables, mutual exclusion) for clients. Phalanx implements data abstractions that ensure useful properties without trusting the servers supporting these abstractions or the clients accessing them, i.e., Phalanx can survive even the arbitrarily malicious corruption of clients and (some number of) servers. At the core of the system are survivable replication techniques that enable efficient scaling to hundreds of Phalanx servers. In this paper we describe the implementation of some of the data abstractions provided by Phalanx, discuss their ability to scale to large systems, and describe an example application.