CODEWITHSUNDEEP
hyperledger-fabrichyperledger
DAufderh
DAufderh

Reputation: 45

Hyperledger-fabric use cases

I'm currently looking to securely replicate hundreds of Gbs of data across a few hundred hosts. I was looking at hyperledger-fabric private blockchain because of its use of TLS and peer to peer gossip protocol for data transmission, plus of course the security of the blockchain itself.

Is it reasonable for me to be considering using blockchain as a way to securely do data replication? I have not seen this in any blockchain use case, but from what I've read it seems reasonable even though everything I've read seems to indicate storing data in the blockchain is a bad idea. Usually the arguments are that it costs too much and the data has to be replicated across all the peers in the system. Cost isn't a concern in this case because its a private blockchain and for my use case the data replication (if it can be done efficiently) is what I'm looking for.

I could use ipfs, swift, S3, etc. to store the data, but that would add operational burden, especially if hyperledger-fabric can do the job on its own.

Also, if I use hyperledger private data collections, how much control over purging do I have? For my use cases, I can't just purge the oldest data as in some cases older data needs to be preserved for a long time and in some cases newer data can be purged fairly quickly.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 164

Answers (1)

Calanais
Calanais

Reputation: 1600

On the subject of data replication:

TL;DR; Not a blockchain solution

Here's my thinking behind that.

  • Storing large amounts of data isn't a good idea as you've mentioned. Yes there's the replication side of the data across. (but that's a side-effect needed in this case). But also there's the signing and validation etc that nees to take place across all that data. So the costs in terms of processing would mean it would inefficient.
  • Definition of securely.. You don't say what quality of service would constitute 'secure'. For example
    • Access Control for users to access the data?
    • Assurance that the data has been replicated and is on disk at remote locations without corruption?
    • Encryption of data to protect it in transit and at rest.
  • Blockchain, and I'm thinking Hyperledger Fabric here, would offer you the assurance. But there's no encryption in transit, you'd need to add that. And access control, the primitives are there but required you to implement and use them.

I would tend to think of the use of Blockchain in this scenario would be to provide the audit trail of how the data was replicated between hosts, with some other protocol.

On the subject of private data collection purging:

Currently this is implemented by purging data when the peer reaches a certain block height. i.e. purge after 42 blocks. But we're working on a feature to allow 'purge-on-demand' based on a call from the chaincode.

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions