PaxosLease Revisited: A Checked Model of Diskless Distributed Leases

Abstract

PaxosLease is a protocol by which a quorum of acceptors grants time-bounded exclusive ownership with no durable acceptor lease state and no disk write on the lease acquisition path. This paper gives a precise, machine-checked statement of the protocol and of its standard use, electing a Multi-Paxos leader. Formalizing and model checking the original protocol changes three rules of its acceptor: two are required for safety, the third allows shorter restart quarantines. The protocol is formalized in TLA+ and checked by TLC, its timing arithmetic is proved in TLAPS, and an executable Python model demonstrates the distributed algorithm for human readers.

15 pages, 1 figure, 3 tables