USER-LEVEL CHECKPOINT AND RESTART FOR GROUPS OF PROCESSES

The technique disclosed herein provides for simultaneously checkpointing all of the processes in a specified process group or family at the application level, and restoring those processes at a later time, optionally on a different machine, with the parent-child relationships restored intact. File descriptors that are shared among the processes at checkpoint time are restored to the family of processes such that the file descriptors are shared just as they were at the time of taking the checkpoint.