Outer bounds on the storage-repair bandwidth trade-off of exact-repair regenerating codes

In this paper, three outer bounds on the normalised storage-repair bandwidth trade-off of regenerating codes having parameter set {(n, k, d),(alpha, beta)} under the exact-repair (ER) setting are presented. The first outer bound, termed as the repair-matrix bound, is applicable for every parameter set (n, k, d), and in conjunction with a code construction known as improved layered codes, it characterises the normalised ER trade-off for the case (n, k = 3, d = n - 1). The bound shows that a non-vanishing gap exists between the ER and functional-repair (FR) trade-offs for every (n, k, d). The second bound, termed as the improved Mohajer-Tandon bound, is an improvement upon an existing bound due to Mohajer et al. and performs better in a region away from the minimum-storage-regenerating (MSR) point. However, in the vicinity of the MSR point, the repair-matrix bound outperforms the improved Mohajer-Tandon bound. The third bound is applicable to linear codes for the case k = d. In conjunction with the class of layered codes, the third outer bound characterises the normalised ER trade-off in the case of linear codes when k = d = n - 1

Increasing Availability in Distributed Storage Systems via Clustering

We introduce the Fixed Cluster Repair System (FCRS) as a novel architecture for Distributed Storage Systems (DSS), achieving a small repair bandwidth while guaranteeing a high availability. Specifically we partition the set of servers in a DSS into $s$ clusters and allow a failed server to choose any cluster other than its own as its repair group. Thereby, we guarantee an availability of $s-1$. We characterize the repair bandwidth vs. storage trade-off for the FCRS under functional repair and show that the minimum repair bandwidth can be improved by an asymptotic multiplicative factor of $2/3$ compared to the state of the art coding techniques that guarantee the same availability. We further introduce Cubic Codes designed to minimize the repair bandwidth of the FCRS under the exact repair model. We prove an asymptotic multiplicative improvement of $0.79$ in the minimum repair bandwidth compared to the existing exact repair coding techniques that achieve the same availability. We show that Cubic Codes are information-theoretically optimal for the FCRS with $2$ and $3$ complete clusters. Furthermore, under the repair-by-transfer model, Cubic Codes are optimal irrespective of the number of clusters

Node repair on connected graphs, Part II

We continue our study of regenerating codes in distributed storage systems where connections between the nodes are constrained by a graph. In this problem, the failed node downloads the information stored at a subset of vertices of the graph for the purpose of recovering the lost data. This information is moved across the network, and the cost of node repair is determined by the graphical distance from the helper nodes to the failed node. This problem was formulated in our recent work (IEEE IT Transactions, May 2022) where we showed that processing of the information at the intermediate nodes can yield savings in repair bandwidth over the direct forwarding of the data. While the previous paper was limited to the MSR case, here we extend our study to the case of general regenerating codes. We derive a lower bound on the repair bandwidth and formulate repair procedures with intermediate processing for several families of regenerating codes, with an emphasis on the recent constructions from multilinear algebra. We also consider the task of data retrieval for codes on graphs, deriving a lower bound on the communication bandwidth and showing that it can be attained at the MBR point of the storage-bandwidth tradeoff curve

On Distributed Storage Codes

Distributed storage systems are studied. The interest in such system has become relatively wide due to the increasing amount of information needed to be stored in data centers or different kinds of cloud systems. There are many kinds of solutions for storing the information into distributed devices regarding the needs of the system designer. This thesis studies the questions of designing such storage systems and also fundamental limits of such systems. Namely, the subjects of interest of this thesis include heterogeneous distributed storage systems, distributed storage systems with the exact repair property, and locally repairable codes. For distributed storage systems with either functional or exact repair, capacity results are proved. In the case of locally repairable codes, the minimum distance is studied. Constructions for exact-repairing codes between minimum bandwidth regeneration (MBR) and minimum storage regeneration (MSR) points are given. These codes exceed the time-sharing line of the extremal points in many cases. Other properties of exact-regenerating codes are also studied. For the heterogeneous setup, the main result is that the capacity of such systems is always smaller than or equal to the capacity of a homogeneous system with symmetric repair with average node size and average repair bandwidth. A randomized construction for a locally repairable code with good minimum distance is given. It is shown that a random linear code of certain natural type has a good minimum distance with high probability. Other properties of locally repairable codes are also studied.Siirretty Doriast