Replication HTTP API

ArangoDB uses synchronous replication between the DB-Servers of a cluster to keep the data of a shard consistent across its leader and followers and to allow immediate failover. The replication architecture and components are described in more detail in Replication.

The HTTP replication interface is primarily used internally to synchronize the nodes of a cluster, for example to bring a new or recovering DB-Server in sync with the current shard leaders. A subset of the endpoints lets you read data and the logged write operations of a server, which is what backup tools such as arangodump rely on. The main purposes are:

• Fetch an inventory of the available collections and indexes, and dump the data of collections (for example, for a backup or for the initial synchronization of a shard also known as snapshot transfer).
• Query the replication state, such as the state of the write-ahead log.
• Fetch the operations logged in the write-ahead log (used for the incremental synchronization of changes).