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Quorums

  • Reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Algorithms

  • 212 Accesses

Years and Authors of Summarized Original Work

  • 1985; Garcia-Molina, Barbara

Problem Definition

Quorum systems are tools for increasing the availability and efficiency of replicated services. A quorum system for a universe of servers is a collection of subsets of servers, each pair of which intersect. Intuitively, each quorum can operate on behalf of the system, thus increasing its availability and performance, while the intersection property guarantees that operations done on distinct quorums preserve consistency.

The motivation for quorum systems stems from the need to make critical missions performed by machines that are reliable. The only way to increase the reliability of a service, aside from using intrinsically more robust hardware, is via replication. To make a service robust, it can be installed on multiple identical servers, each one of which holds a copy of the service state and performs read/write operations on it. This allows the system to provide information and perform...

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Recommended Reading

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Microsoft, Silicon Valley Campus, Mountain View, CA, USA

    Dahlia Malkhi

Authors
  1. Dahlia Malkhi
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Ming-Yang Kao

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Malkhi, D. (2016). Quorums. In: Kao, MY. (eds) Encyclopedia of Algorithms. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2864-4_319

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