# A Distributed File-Based Storage System for Improving High Availability of Space Weather Data
## 1 Introduction
A major drawback of this approach is the data availability issue; access to data is limited only by server lifetime and the connection between the user and the server. Moreover, the centralized storage system can represent a high risk of data loss without an optimal backup system. Further investigation reveals that, in addition to being a single point of failure, other issues that cause data updating delay in centralized storage include heavy traffic volumes and link bottlenecks. Moreover, the instruments that have generated the latest data cannot update the server dataset, and the data growth increases daily, requiring adequate storage capacity. Hence, a new solution that can address these problems is needed. To improve data availability, we should move to a decentralized storage system. This can benefit by leveraging available resources  
Figure 1: Map of LAPAN (Indonesia National Institute of Aeronautics and Space) observatories in Indonesia. from other hosts, taking advantage of high data throughput, while also mitigating single point of failures. The decentralized storage is a method of storing data by encrypting and distributing the data across a decentralized network. It does not rely on a central service provider for data storage. Decentralized storage can eliminate and solve the problem of data failures [5] and outages in the traditional storage system by increasing security, privacy, and control of the data [6; 7; 8]. Moreover, decentralized storage also can increase the percentage of data availability by spreading files to be stored on the hosts that are connected peer-to-peer. Consequently, this method, where each host can exchange files directly, as well as have roles as a client and server, would reduce user dependency on a single server. In addition, encryption by a hash function offers an advantage of compressing files and protecting from data corruption. Thus, data generated by the instruments can be kept on each data collection server continuously without concern about single-point failures while also providing improved data security [9]. The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is a peer-to-peer decentralized system protocol for distributing files throughout connected computing devices in the same system of files. The IPFS provides a high data throughput with a content-addressed block storage model, requires no central server, and distributes and stores the data in spread locations [10; 11]. The IPFS allows any node that has a connection to the network to be able to retrieve and store data for themselves by \"pinning\" content actively. In this study, a new system was proposed for data management using a decentralized storage model, leveraging the IPFS distributed system for storing and sharing the space weather observation data across the peer-to-peer network. We also coupled IPFS with IPFS-Cluster to replicate automatically as well as limit the replication of data only for peer members [12]. Moreover, a technique for monitoring the system through active and passive approaches was developed. The passive approach was intended to gain the flow of data between nodes, and the active approach determined the status of each node (e.g., whether online or not). Afterward, system performance was evaluated and analyzed by comparing the performance of the proposed system with that of the existing one. The tested parameters were the mean time of replication of files and the mean throughput from a node. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 discusses the background of this study, and Section 3 provides the architecture of the proposed system. Section 4 describes the detailed implementation of the system. Section 5 deals with the experiments and results of this work. Finally, the conclusion and future direction are presented in Section 6.