Data Replication Methods in Cloud, Fog, and Edge Computing: A Systematic Literature Review

Nowadays, a large amount of data is being generated and these data are usually stored in distributed environments such as cloud, fog, and edge environments. Data replication, which is commonly used to manage large amounts of data, improves overall accessibility and availability. Due to the importance of data replication, a lot of research has been done on replication methods in these environments. In this paper, a systematic review has been conducted to analyze the existing studies on data replication methods in cloud, fog, edge, and edge-cloud environments. The advantages, disadvantages, and some of the main challenges of the existing methods are explained and a taxonomy of data replication methods is provided. The selected papers are analyzed based on various criteria related to data replication, such as recovery, storage cost, load balancing, replica consistency, security, mobility, and data migration. Finally, the open issues and future research directions are discussed.