Have you ever experienced a server failure and thought about your data loss? I have, and it is extremely frightening. This is why fault tolerance can be useful - to preserve your data when things break. Data mirroring and erasure coding are two popular ways to do this, and both are very simple to explain.
Reasons people enjoy data mirroring:
• Fast Restore- You always get your data back instantly.
• Easy to Deploy- You can fairly well do this in systems like RAID 1 or VPS hosting.
• Great reliability- You always have an instantly available entire copy.
Negatively? You can end up with twice the storage availability, and this can be very costly for large systems.
If some servers cannot be accessed, the parity pieces will allow the data to be reconstructed. It is comparable to a puzzle in which a few puzzle pieces are missing, but the entire picture can still be viewed.
Benefits:
• Space efficient: Erasure coding is more space efficient because you do not need full duplicate copies of the data.
• Can survive many failures: Erasure coding keeps the data safe even if many servers fail.
• Designed for large systems: Erasure coding scales well for cloud storage or very large distributed configuration.
However, erasure coding has longer rebuild times compared to mirroring.
• Select data mirroring if you want faster recovery of your system and ease of use. Data mirroring is ideal for VPS or smaller systems where uptime is critical and frequent outages may cause major disruption.
• Select erasure coding if you want better space efficiency and better scalability. Erasure coding is designed for large cloud systems but at a lower speed to recover.
Simply put: Both options keep your data safe, but which is the best choice truly depends on your environment and priorities.
Here is the Guide to Data Mirroring
Data mirroring is basically a perfect replica of your data instantly. Every time you save a file, it is sent to another drive or server instantly. So, when one drive fails, the other drive immediately takes over as if nothing happened.Reasons people enjoy data mirroring:
• Fast Restore- You always get your data back instantly.
• Easy to Deploy- You can fairly well do this in systems like RAID 1 or VPS hosting.
• Great reliability- You always have an instantly available entire copy.
Negatively? You can end up with twice the storage availability, and this can be very costly for large systems.
How Does Erasure Coding Work?
Erasure coding works differently. In erasure coding, data is divided into pieces, additional pieces of information (called parity) are added, and the pieces are distributed across servers.If some servers cannot be accessed, the parity pieces will allow the data to be reconstructed. It is comparable to a puzzle in which a few puzzle pieces are missing, but the entire picture can still be viewed.
Benefits:
• Space efficient: Erasure coding is more space efficient because you do not need full duplicate copies of the data.
• Can survive many failures: Erasure coding keeps the data safe even if many servers fail.
• Designed for large systems: Erasure coding scales well for cloud storage or very large distributed configuration.
However, erasure coding has longer rebuild times compared to mirroring.
Which Model to Select?
It depends on what you want:• Select data mirroring if you want faster recovery of your system and ease of use. Data mirroring is ideal for VPS or smaller systems where uptime is critical and frequent outages may cause major disruption.
• Select erasure coding if you want better space efficiency and better scalability. Erasure coding is designed for large cloud systems but at a lower speed to recover.
My Experience
I have worked with both options. In the case of VPS hosting, I favor mirroring because speed is important. In large cloud storage, I favor erasure coding because it saves space while still keeping data reproducible.Simply put: Both options keep your data safe, but which is the best choice truly depends on your environment and priorities.