A Distributed File-Based Storage System for Improving High Availability of Space Weather Data

In space science research, the Indonesia National Institute of Aeronautics and Space (LAPAN) is concerned with the development of a system that provides actual information and predictions called the Space Weather Information and Forecast Services (SWIFtS). SWIFtS is supported by a data storage system that serves data, implementing a centralized storage model. This has some problems that impact to researchers as the primary users. The single point of failure and also the delay in data updating on the server is a significant issue when researchers need the latest data, but the server is unable to provide it. To overcome these problems, we proposed a new system that utilized a decentralized model for storing data, leveraging the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) file system. Our proposed method focused on the automated background process, and its scheme would increase the data availability and throughput by spreading it into nodes through a peer-to-peer connection. Moreover, we also included system monitoring for real-time data flow from each node and information of node status that combines active and passive approaches. For system evaluation, the experiment was performed to determine the performance of the proposed system compared to the existing system by calculating mean replication time and the mean throughput of a node. As expected, performance evaluations showed that our proposed scheme had faster file replication time and supported high throughput.