Home > Storage > ObjectScale and ECS > Product Documentation > Dell ECS: High Availability Design > Read data flow in geo-replicated environment
Because ECS replicates data asynchronously to multiple VDCs within a replication group, it requires a method to ensure consistency of data across sites or VDCs. ECS ensures strong consistency by fetching the latest copy of the metadata from the site that is the object owner. If the requesting site contains a copy (chunk type = local or copy) of the object, it uses that copy to service the read request; otherwise, it fetches the data from the object owner. The following figure shows an example of the read data flow. The figure depicts a read request for Object A from a site other than the object owner site.
In this example, the flow of the read operation is as follows:
Object ownership: