Aktuelle offene Themen
“SMRctrl: A central mangement component for state-machine replication,” Bachelor Thesis or Project, F. J. Hauck (Supervisor), F. J. Hauck (Examiner), Inst. of Distr. Sys., Ulm Univ., 2026 – Open.
State-machine replication is a concept to achieve fault tolerance. Multiple replicas execute each the same requests on behalf of clients. At the institute we have an own replication framework called SMRteez. As the setup of multiple replicas is complex and error prone, there were initial attempts for a central component that can start, stop and manage replicas from a GUI-based program. The goal of this work is a redesign of this component so that security concerns (e.g., availability of private keys) are considered and the operations are base on a REST interface that can either be operated with a command-line tool or by a web-based single-page application, i.e. a browser GUI. Exact coverage has to be discussed based on the amount of available credit points.
“Re-Implementing etcd using an SMR framework,” Bachelor Thesis or Project, F. J. Hauck (Supervisor), F. J. Hauck (Examiner), Inst. of Distr. Sys., Ulm Univ., 2026 – Open.
State-machine replication is a concept to achieve fault tolerance. There are several frameworks to support SMR-based applications. Etcd is an application implementing a so-called coordination service. It is internally build with SMR technology, but does not use an underlying framework. The task of this work is to reimplement etcd with the BFT-SMaRt/SMRteez framework. The goal is to demonstrate that the framework can handle such applications. In case of a Bachelor's thesis, in case of remaining time also in case of project work, the performance shall be compared to the original etcd implementation.
Project Distributed Applications, Platforms and Systems I
Winter Semester 2026/2027
| Title: | Project Distributed Applications, Platforms and Systems I |
| German Title: | Projekt Verteilte Anwendungen, Plattformen und Systeme I |
| Type: | Module, Project |
| Token / Number / Module number: | VAPS1 / - / 74724 |
| Semester hours / Credits: | 2 SCH / 8 CP |
| Lecturer: | Prof. Dr.-Ing. Franz J. Hauck |
| Tutor: | Prof. Dr.-Ing. Franz J. Hauck, Alexander Heß, Christoph Denzel |
| General schedule: | Project Start: anytime; contact one of the potential supervisors from the list above Topics: Please contact the supervisor for a specific topic or Prof. Hauck. You are welcome to contact the respective supervisor in advance or at any time during the semester to reserve a topic or get started on one. Additional topics often become available on short notice, so it’s worth asking potential supervisors about other options. We are also open to your own suggestions, but would like to limit these to topics for which we have the expertise to supervise and in which we have a certain level of interest, so that we are willing to acquire any additional knowledge that may be necessary. |
| Learning platform: | |
| Grade bonus: | |
| Exam dates: | |
| Current Topics: | “SMRctrl: A central mangement component for state-machine replication,” Bachelor Thesis or Project, F. J. Hauck (Supervisor), F. J. Hauck (Examiner), Inst. of Distr. Sys., Ulm Univ., 2026 – Open. State-machine replication is a concept to achieve fault tolerance. Multiple replicas execute each the same requests on behalf of clients. At the institute we have an own replication framework called SMRteez. As the setup of multiple replicas is complex and error prone, there were initial attempts for a central component that can start, stop and manage replicas from a GUI-based program. The goal of this work is a redesign of this component so that security concerns (e.g., availability of private keys) are considered and the operations are base on a REST interface that can either be operated with a command-line tool or by a web-based single-page application, i.e. a browser GUI. Exact coverage has to be discussed based on the amount of available credit points. “Re-Implementing etcd using an SMR framework,” Bachelor Thesis or Project, F. J. Hauck (Supervisor), F. J. Hauck (Examiner), Inst. of Distr. Sys., Ulm Univ., 2026 – Open. State-machine replication is a concept to achieve fault tolerance. There are several frameworks to support SMR-based applications. Etcd is an application implementing a so-called coordination service. It is internally build with SMR technology, but does not use an underlying framework. The task of this work is to reimplement etcd with the BFT-SMaRt/SMRteez framework. The goal is to demonstrate that the framework can handle such applications. In case of a Bachelor's thesis, in case of remaining time also in case of project work, the performance shall be compared to the original etcd implementation. “Adaptive Timeouts for a Replication Framework,” Bachelor Thesis or Project, C. Denzel (Supervisor), F. J. Hauck (Examiner), Inst. of Distr. Sys., Ulm Univ., 2026 – Open. State-machine replication is a concept to achieve fault tolerance. Multiple replicas execute each the same requests on behalf of clients. At the institute we have an own replication framework called SMRteez. It is equipped with a mechanism to deterministically measure some metrics in each replica so that adaptation concepts can be built on top. This work is about measuring the length of the underlying consensus protocol and dynamically adjust the local timeout when a replica is considered to be faulty. This not only allows for faster crash detection but also for faster misbehavior detection in Byzantine replicas. |
