Data replication is the process of creating an exact copy of the data so that the data copy may be used to restore original data or restart an operation. The diffrence between backup and data replication is that typically replication systems will maintain a current copy of our primary data.
Where backup is taken at a particular point in time, replication will maintain a current copy of the data,
so that when we make a change to my primay data, that change is replicated or over to replication site
or replication storage .
So at any given time, we have a near exact copy. There may be same lag depending on the method of replication, but we have almost a near exact copy or we do have an exact copy of our data at our replicated site.
Example, we have original data in our primary storage and then we have a replica storage. We may make initial copy of the other replica site data over that, we may just replicate the changes on the other replica site.
Consequently, data replication helps ;
- Provides protection against data loss or corruption
- Improves data availability for bussiness continuance
- It can help us minimize use of compute, storage and network resources of the primary site’ infrastructure