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Introduction
At some point in the grows of a database, there comes a need for replicating it across multiple datacenters.
Reasons for that can be:
- Fallback in case of a disaster in one datacenter
- Regional availability
- Separation of concerns
And many more.
Starting from version 3.3, ArangoDB supports datacenter to datacenter replication, via the ArangoSync tool.
ArangoDB's datacenter to datacenter replication is a solution that enables you
to asynchronously replicate the entire structure and content in an ArangoDB Cluster
in one place to a Cluster in another place. Typically it is used from one datacenter
to another.
It is not a solution for replicating single server instances.
The replication done by ArangoSync in asynchronous. That means that when a client is writing data into the source datacenter, it will consider the request finished before the data has been replicated to the other datacenter. The time needed to completely replicate changes to the other datacenter is typically in the order of seconds, but this can vary significantly depending on load, network & computer capacity.
ArangoSync performs replication in a single direction only. That means that
you can replicate data from cluster A to cluster B or from cluster B to
cluster A, but never at the same time.
Data modified in the destination cluster will be lost!
Replication is a completely autonomous process. Once it is configured it is
designed to run 24/7 without frequent manual intervention.
This does not mean that it requires no maintenance or attention at all.
As with any distributed system some attention is needed to monitor its operation
and keep it secure (e.g. certificate & password rotation).
Once configured, ArangoSync will replicate both structure and data of an
entire cluster. This means that there is no need to make additional configuration
changes when adding/removing databases or collections.
Also meta data such as users, Foxx application & jobs are automatically replicated.