Modeling a Dynamic Data Replication Strategy to Increase System Availability in Cloud Computing Environments

作者：Sun Da Wei; Chang Gui Ran; Gao Shang; Jin Li Zhong; Wang Xing Wei^*

来源：Journal of Computer Science and Technology, 2012, 27(2): 256-272.

DOI：10.1007/s11390-012-1221-4

• system availability
• replication perspective
• high fault tolerance
• temporal locality
• cloud computing

Failures are normal rather than exceptional in the cloud computing environments. To improve system availability, replicating the popular data to multiple suitable locations is an advisable choice, as users can access the data from a nearby site. This is, however, not the case for replicas which must have a fixed number of copies on several locations. How to decide a reasonable number and right locations for replicas has become a challenge in the cloud computing. In this paper, a dynamic data replication strategy is put forward with a brief survey of replication strategy suitable for distributed computing environments. It includes: 1) analyzing and modeling the relationship between system availability and the number of replicas; 2) evaluating and identifying the popular data and triggering a replication operation when the popularity data passes a dynamic threshold; 3) calculating a suitable number of copies to meet a reasonable system byte effective rate requirement and placing replicas among data nodes in a balanced way; 4) designing the dynamic data replication algorithm in a cloud. Experimental results demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of the improved system brought by the proposed strategy in a cloud.

• 出版日期2012-3
• 单位迪肯大学; 东北大学