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Encyclopedia of Database Systems pp 3187–3193Cite as

Replication for Availability and Fault Tolerance

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Synonyms

Backup mechanisms; Fault-tolerance

Definition

Replication is a common mechanism to increase the availability of a data service. The idea is to have several copies of the database, each of them installed on a different site (machine or set of machines). Using replication, the data remains available as long as one site is running and accessible. Fault tolerance is related to availability, and the two terms are often used interchangeably. A system is considered fault tolerant if it continues to work correctly despite the failure of individual components. Replicating data and processes over several sites, the failure of any individual site can be masked since the tasks executed by the failed site can be transferred to one of the available sites. In its strict definition, a fault-tolerant system must behave exactly as a system where components never fail. This requires making failures transparent to clients and typically means that all data copies have to be consistent at all...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computer Science, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada

    Bettina Kemme

Authors
  1. Bettina Kemme
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Bettina Kemme .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Ling Liu

  2. University of Waterloo School of Computer Science, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    M. Tamer Özsu

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Kemme, B. (2018). Replication for Availability and Fault Tolerance. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8265-9_80723

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