GitHub has rolled out a new feature that it claims will make the widely used code hosting platform far less prone to downtime.
Distributed Git (DGit) uses the sync mechanisms of the Git protocol to replicate GitHub's repositories among three servers. Should one server go offline because of a mishap or for maintenance, traffic can be redirected to the other two.
Using Git as the replication mechanism provides companies with a little more flexibility than simply mirroring blocks between disks, according to GitHub. "Think of the replicas as three loosely coupled Git repositories kept in sync via Git protocols, rather than identical disk images full of repositories," says the blog post describing the new system. Read operations can be directed to a specific replica if needed, and new replicas of a given repository can be created if a file server has to be taken offline.
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