Describe the purpose of the checkpoint mechanism. How habitually must checkpoints be performed? Explain how the frequency of checkpoints affects:
- System performance while no failure occurs
- The time it acquires to recover from a system crash
- The time it acquires to recover from a disk crash
Answer: A checkpoint log record point outs that a log record and its modified data has been written to stable storage and that the transaction need not to be redone in case of a system crash. Clearly the more often checkpoints are performed the less likely it is that redundant updates will have to be performed during the recovery process.
- System performance when no failure take places-If no failures takes place the system must incur the cost of performing checkpoints that are essentially unnecessary. In these circumstances performing checkpoints less often will lead to better system performance.
- The time acquires to recover from a system crash-the existence of a checkpoint record means that an operation will not have to be redone during system recovery. In these circumstances the more often checkpoints were performed the faster the recovery time is from a system crash.
- The time it acquires to recover from a disk crash-the survival of a checkpoint record means that an operation will not have to be redone during system recovery. In this situation the more frequently checkpoints were performed the faster the recovery time is from a disk crash.