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Data Replication

Data replication is one of the bedrock principles upon which the Columbia Center and The Columbia Center System is based. Recent history aptly illustrates the rationale behind this process. On September 11, 2001, the terrorist attack took out the New York City Emergency Operations Center, located in Building 7 of the WTC, along with the Twin Towers.

World Trade Center destroyed The Columbia Center is working towards providing live backup and geodata replication services for a number of local and regional governmental agencies. These services are being developed using state-of-the-art software that allows cross-database replication of geospatial data. The intention is to provide fault-tolerance and disaster recovery for critical public datasets.

Closer to home, Tropical Storm Allison dumped as much as 40 inches of rainfall over Southeast Texas, causing wide-spread flooding. Among the buildings flooded was the one containing the Texas GigaPop, a major network connection providing service to much of the Texas academic community, including SFASU. The outage effectively severed all communication to most geospatial assets in eastern Texas.

These examples illustrate why single points of failure cannot be tolerated for critical resources.

The Columbia Center philosophy answers this critical concern by replicating data and services across the state. The System partners, the University of Texas at El Paso, Texas Tech University and Lamar University replicate each other's data stores as well as critical state-wide data maintained by the Texas Natural Geographic Information system. In this way no part of the state can be cut off from critical geospatial assets.

In addition to replicating state wide and each other's data, the Centers provide replication services for local and regional governments. Through cooperative agreements, resources can be allocated at the Centers to backup and serve out critical data. Projects are currently underway with the following agencies:

  • The Deep East Texas Council of Governments
  • The East Texas Council of Governments
  • The Houston/Galveston Area Council
  • The City of Tyler
  • The City of Nacogdoches
  • Nacogdoches County
  • Panola County


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