Argosy: verifying layered storage systems with recovery refinement

Abstract

Storage systems make persistence guarantees even if the system crashes at any time, which they achieve using recovery procedures that run after a crash. We present Argosy, a framework for machine-checked proofs of storage systems that supports layered recovery implementations with modular proofs. Reasoning about layered recovery procedures is especially challenging because the system can crash in the middle of a more abstract layer's recovery procedure and must start over with the lowest-level recovery procedure. This paper introduces recovery refinement, a set of conditions that ensure proper implementation of an interface with a recovery procedure. Argosy includes a proof that recovery refinements compose, using Kleene algebra for concise definitions and metatheory. We implemented Crash Hoare Logic, the program logic used by FSCQ [8], to prove recovery refinement, and demonstrated the whole system by verifying an example of layered recovery featuring a write-ahead log running on top of a disk replication system. The metatheory of the framework, the soundness of the program logic, and these examples are all verified in the Coq proof assistant.