Background

In a distributed system, while moving data between components, it is possible that the data fetched from a node may arrive corrupted. This corruption can occur because of faults in a storage device, network, software, etc. How can a distributed system ensure data integrity, so that the client receives an error instead of corrupt data?

Solution

Calculate a checksum and store it with data.

To calculate a checksum, a cryptographic hash function like MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, or SHA-512 is used