A Comparative Study of Replication Techniques in Grid Computing Systems

Grid Computing is a type of parallel and distributed systems that is designed to provide reliable access to data and computational resources in wide area networks. These resources are distributed in different geographical locations, however are organized to provide an integrated service. Effective data management in today`s enterprise environment is an important issue. Also, Performance is one of the challenges of using these environments. For improving the performance of file access and easing the sharing amongst distributed systems, replication techniques are used. Data replication is a common method used in distributed environments, where essential data is stored in multiple locations, so that a user can access the data from a site in his area. In this paper, we present a survey on basic and new replication techniques that have been proposed by other researchers. After that, we have a full comparative study on these replication strategies. Also, at the end of the paper, we summarize the results and points of these replication techniques.