Replication
Who chooses replication, and why
Organizations use replication to protect data from loss, to implement disaster recovery, to migrate data to new locations, and to repurpose data for other systems, such as for test and development activities or decision-support applications.
How replication works
Data is copied from the source and sent over a network to a target device. The process may be host-based, network-based, or array-based. Bandwidth reduction and data compression may be used to reduce the impact on production resources. Most replication occurs during production activity—either synchronously, in step with production, or asynchronously, closely behind production activity.
Benefits of replication
Without impacting production applications and activity, replication reduces the risk of information loss and enables critical applications to be run from a secondary location in the event of a planned or unplanned outage or disaster. Replication also enables organizations to easily and nondisruptively move data—either to a new location or to other environments and systems.