Using Peer-to-Peer Systems for Data Management

This chapter describes a peer-to-peer approach for managing data backup and recovery in an enterprise environment. Data management systems in enterprises constitute a significant portion of the total cost of management of data in enterprise systems. Maintaining data with a high degree of availability and reliability is typically done by having a centralized backup system that maintains backup copies of data. The maintenance of a large dedicated backup server for data management requires a highly scalable network and storage infrastructure, leading to a major expense center within the enterprise. With the current trends in workstation disk storage, an alternative peer-to-peer paradigm for data management can offer an approach that provides equivalent performance at a fraction of the cost of the centralized backup system. The author hopes that the contents of the chapter would lead to the development of more solutions that harness the power of peer-to-peer networks.