Using information dispersal --slicing the data and spreading it out among servers, only to be reassembled when you need it--that very same file has a 60% storage overhead in a standard configuration. That’s it. It doesn’t increase. And, if a number of servers where slices are dispersed happen to fail, you can get your entire, uncorrupted and undamaged file back, as long as you have access to a minimum threshold for retrieval. That means, for example, if six of 16 slices are down, you can still get the entire file back. The entire file. At a lower cost. With less complexity. Without replication. Information dispersal does it without the stress, risk, hardware and bandwidth associated with the old way.
While reading post on High Scalability, I came across this and thought it just made sense for the architecture of the public safety cloud. Anyone else have an opinion?
