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Fault Tolerance |
Fault Tolerance
Fault tolerance is the property that enables a system to continue its intended operation, possibly at a reduced level, rather than failing completely, when some portion of the system fails.
A database is fault-tolerant when it can access a secondary shard when the primary is unavailable.
This is achieved through:
- Database Replication
- Fault Detection & Failover
A database that maintains multiple copies of all data in different physical nodes located across independent physical sub-systems, such as server racks and network routers, has a higher probability to continue operating when the primary copy of the data is unavailable due to its ability to read data from multiple replications.
In large-scale distribution systems, it becomes increasingly important to have reliable failure detection systems that can identify failing storage drives and provide failover units in order to maximise service uptime.