As the volume of data that businesses collect today increases, the need for tools that can help manage this data also increases. One of the most significant requirements of businesses for managing data is a tool that can seamlessly replicate the high volume of data that has been collected.
A diverse set of tools available in the market can be used by businesses to replicate data. Businesses can either choose to go for paid or free open-source tools. There are a lot of advantages to using each of those options.
Paid tools usually have quality support, up-to-date documentation, and regular product updates to keep up with the database changes and customer requirements. Free open-source tools allow businesses to customize the tool as per their requirements.
This article will provide you with a comprehensive understanding of what data replication is, what are its benefits, and which are the best open source data replication tools available in the market.
You can also learn more about open source database replication and its aspects to know its significance.
What is Data Replication?
Data Replication from Different Sources
Data replication can be defined as the process of making copies of data and storing them in databases across different locations in order to improve their overall accessibility and performance in the network. In simple terms, it can be said that it is the process of copying data stored in a database from one server to another server, ensuring high availability so that all the users can access the same data without facing any consistency issues or putting too much data load on a single Server.
This results in the formation of a distributed database setup in which users can access data relevant to their requirements easily and quickly. The replicated database is updated and synchronized with the source on a regular basis to ensure that the data is consistent across all its replications.
Also Read: Types of Data Replication
The Benefits of Data Replication
The key benefits of implementing data replication are as follows:
- Improved data availability: Data replication improves the reliability and resilience of databases by storing the same data in multiple nodes across the network. This means that if one node goes down due to glitches or for maintenance, the data stored in it can still be accessed from a different node.
- Increase in data access speed: If a lot of users are trying to access the data stored in a single database, users might face some latency due to the high load on the database. Another situation in which users might face high latency would be when they’re trying to access data stored in a single database from different parts of the world. If the data has been replicated on their user’s local Servers, the issue of high latency would be resolved.
- Improved server performance: Data replication significantly improves the server’s performance by dispersing its load across various Nodes, thereby improving the overall network performance.
- Data recovery: Data replication facilitates the recovery of corrupted or lost data by maintaining accurate backups across numerous well-monitored locations.
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Numerous data replication tools are available in the market. Many users prefer implementing an open-source solution because the tool’s source code is easily available, giving you the ability to make changes to the tool based on the business use case and data requirements. Some of the best open source data replication tools available in the market are as follows:
ReplicaDB is one of the most well-known open source data replication tools that was designed specifically for transferring bulk data between NoSQL and relational databases.
Replica DB
ReplicaDB is a Java-based cross-platform solution with a simple architecture that supports data replication for most SQL and NoSQL databases along with persistent stores such as Kafka, Amazon S3, etc. It can be used directly on the command line running on a server without any other remote agents on the database.
Although ReplicaDB is capable of providing good performance on large databases, it does not support pure change data capture (CDC) or streaming data.
More information on ReplicaDB can be found here.
SymmetricDS is an open-source file and database synchronization tool that houses functionalities such as filtered synchronization, multi-master replication, transformation capabilities, etc.
It houses a large number of powerful features that give users the flexibility to meet business requirements by easily scaling out the databases to increase the number of replications and handle a large number of synchronization requests. It can also synchronize data between nodes across remote networks with low bandwidth usage and automatically handle periods of disconnected operation.
SymmetricDS is built on Java Runtime and can run on most modern operating systems such as Windows, Linux, Mac OS, Unix, etc. This cross-platform support allows SymmetricDS to run on almost all servers/computers/mobile devices and can be used to replicate data stored on the cloud, across a wide area network, or on-premise.
More information on SymmetricDS can be found here.
Tungsten Replicator is another popular open-source data replication tool that supports a variety of different extractors and modules. It allows users to replicate data from databases like MySQL, Amazon Aurora, Amazon RDS MySQL, Google Cloud SQL, and Microsoft Azure along with a variety of transactional data stores, NoSQL databases, and data warehouses.
While performing the required data replication operations, Tungsten Replicator assigns each data record a unique global transaction ID that enables row-based replication of data. This allows data replication between different databases and different versions of a database.
Tungsten Replicator also allows information to be filtered and modified during data replication. In order to ensure the best performance, Tungsten Replicator also provides support for advanced topologies and parallel replication.
More information on Tungsten Replication can be found here.
Talend Open Studio is an open-source tool by Talend that can be used for data replication and various other data integration operations. Talend Open Studio houses a wide range of features that allow users to access more than 1,000 possible components that can be used to connect to virtually any data source including all Cloud and On-Premise solutions.
Along with its free open-source tool, Talend also offers a variety of paid tools with many features that businesses can leverage to manage their data.
More information on Talend can be found here.
Rubyrep is an open source data replication tool released under the MIT license. It incorporates various data replication features that possess the ability to perform the following operations:
- Automatically set up necessary log tables, triggers, etc.
- Automatically discover newly added tables, and synchronize the content of tables between the source and destination.
- Implement both Master-Master and Master-Slave replication based on the business and data requirements.
- Automatically resolve data conflicts between source and destination or give users the ability to set up custom Conflict Resolution Models.
More information on Rubyrep can be found here.
Conclusion
This article provided you with an in-depth understanding of what data replication is and what are the benefits of its implementation for your database. It also provided you with a list of the best open source data replication tools that are available in the market today.
Businesses can either manually implement one of these tools to set up data replication, which might require immense engineering bandwidth for development and maintenance, or use automated platforms like Hevo.
Now you can learn more about open-source ETL tools to know how they work and how they help businesses to keep their costs low but provide similar functionalities as other ETL tools.
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