Pratikriti: A Data Replication Service in the GFFS

This paper describes the design and implementation of Pratikriti, a data replication service with high availability, improved performance and strong data
security. Pratikriti provides automatic replication for file
system resources in Genesis II [1][6]. Genesis II supports the
LightweightExport service [2]; which maps the data residing
on local machines into the Global Federated File System
(GFFS) namespace. The physical copy of the data resides on
a local File System (FS), but once exported, the data can
be accessed via the GFFS from anywhere subject to access
control. Pratikriti extends the LightweightExport service in
Genesis II to asynchronously replicate the data residing on a
users local FS to multiple sites. With replication, users get a
better Quality of Service (QoS), namely High Availability (HA)
and improved performance. Pratikriti acts like the Dropbox TM
i.e., the local data is securely replicated and kept eventually
consistent among multiple sites without human intervention.
The system copes with server failures by transparently
switching over to the next available replica server. We show
that our solution successfully replicates the data to multiple
sites while providing high availability and performance.