Data replication schemes in cloud computing: a survey

In recent years, cloud storage systems have emerged as a promising technology for storing data blocks on various cloud servers. One of the main mechanisms in cloud storage systems is data replication, for which various solutions are proposed. Data replication's main target is achieving higher performance for data-intensive applications by addressing some critical challenges of this criterion, such as availability, reliability, security, bandwidth, and response time of data access. However, to the best of the author’s knowledge, there is no systematic, comprehensive, and complete survey in the cloud data replication despite its impacts and maturity. This paper presents a comprehensive survey and classification of state-of-the-art data replication schemes among different existing cloud computing solutions in the form of a classical classification to define current schemes on the topic and present open issues. The presented classification comprises three main classes; data deduplication schemes, data auditing schemes, and data handling schemes. A complete comparative comparison of the replication schemes highlights their main properties, such as utilized classes, type of the scheme, the place of implementation, evaluation tools, and their advantages and weaknesses. Finally, open issues and future uncovered or weakly covered research challenges are discussed, and the survey will be concluded.