Checkpointing
Checkpointing is a fault tolerance technique in computing where the state of a system, application, or process is periodically saved to stable storage, allowing recovery from failures by restoring to a previously saved state. It is widely used in distributed systems, high-performance computing, and long-running applications to ensure data consistency and minimize data loss. This process involves capturing snapshots of memory, disk, or other resources at specific intervals.
Developers should learn checkpointing when building resilient systems that require high availability, such as financial transactions, scientific simulations, or cloud-based services, to handle hardware failures, software crashes, or network issues without restarting from scratch. It is essential in environments like Apache Spark for data processing, databases for crash recovery, and machine learning training to save model progress, reducing recomputation time and costs.